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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THROUGH COLLEGE 
ON NOTHING A YEAR 



THROUGH COLLEGE 
ON NOTHING A YEAR 

LITERALLY RECORDED 
FROM A STUDENT'S STORY 



BY 

CHRISTIAN GAUSS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1915 



V<3 



Copyright, 191 5, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published October, 1915 




«i r > 



16 1915 



CI.AJ14081 



A POOR RETURN FOR SERVICE RICHLY GIVEN, THIS 
PLAIN ACCOUNT OF LIFE AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 
IS DEDICATED BY BOTH THE SPEAKER AND HIS 
SCRIBE TO THAT LOYAL SON OF HIS ALMA MATER, 
GEORGE MCFARLANE GALT, IN RECOGNITION 



PREFACE 

The reader of this volume is eavesdropping 
on what we hope will prove to be for him an in- 
teresting and profitable story of real life. And 
this brief preface is designed to apprise him more 
fully of his privileges and status. 

The informality of the following narrative will 
in all probability be a sufficient indication that 
the experiences here so frankly revealed were 
not in the first instance intended for any larger 
public, or for a public at all. Such is indeed the 
case. Had I at that time intimated to the very 
busy and matter-of-fact young man here con- 
cerned that he was to become the "hero" of a 
printed book, I feel sure that in spite of old 
acquaintance he would have looked upon me 
askance and have avoided my questions with sus- 
picion. Of any such fate he had, for these times, 
a somewhat unusually healthy horror. I feel it 
my duty, therefore, to remove this seeming curse 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

which, as a result of unforeseen circumstances I 
have in a sort brought upon him; for it should 
be understood at the outset that the story is 
now presented with the narrator's as well as the 
writer's sanction. 

A whole school of philosophers holds that there 
can be no changes in our world which are not 
somehow known or experienced by the human 
mind and soul. Man, they tell us, is the measure 
of all things. This problem, in deference, we 
must leave with them. It will be plain even to 
the lay mind, however, that conditions in colleges 
cannot change, or even exist, without affecting 
the lives of individual students, and as a result 
of this embarrassing fact, which a philosopher 
might have foreseen but which we did not, what 
began as an impersonal investigation of conditions 
has become this frankly personal narrative and 
confession. 

A university publication had planned a series of 
articles on the opportunities offered to and the 
methods employed by that increasing number of 
students who are earning their way through col- 
lege. In gathering the facts for such an investi- 



PREFACE ix 

gation I naturally turned to students so situated, 
and in particular to the young man of our story, 
for he was well known to me personally and had 
at this time nearly finished his college course 
with no assistance from outside. With him I 
had a number of most informal conferences on 
nearly all the phases of this problem, and he very 
willingly told me of his own ventures and ex- 
periences, believing that he could thus be of as- 
sistance to others who were or would later be in 
a position like his own; for many of his difficul- 
ties were due, as his story will show, to ignorance 
of conditions which he was called upon to face, 
and which he indicated and explained. Un- 
known and with no prospect of financial assist- 
ance, he had, as the result of a boyish determina- 
tion, suddenly found himself upon a college 
campus, where, in an utterly strange world, like 
the man from Mars, he for some time had the 
sense of being an interloper in a stranger's house. 
He labored under yet other handicaps particularly 
severe, which even an American lad of foreign 
parentage, born in the slums, would not be called 
upon to face. These he never discussed but ac- 



x PREFACE 

cepted so much as a matter of course that no hint 
of them is conveyed in his cheerful narrative. 
Suffice it to say that his case was extreme; it 
presented every possible difficulty and the odds 
could not have been heavier against him. Evi- 
dently, if he could succeed, the way was open to 
any young man of equal determination, though 
it should be added that his was a determination 
and fixity of purpose by no means common. I 
soon realized that in his own experience he had 
confronted and solved practically every problem 
which we were investigating, and which might 
confront the poor boy looking forward to a uni- 
versity education. 

As truth is stranger than fiction and more in- 
teresting than statistics, I was convinced that 
his own story would be far more significant and 
of greater value than any articles of mine might 
ever hope to be, and I repeatedly urged him to 
write it. This his modesty refused to allow him 
to do. He offered no objection, however, to my 
making use of the material he had placed in my 
hands, in case it was felt that it would be of value 
and interest to others. 



PREFACE xi 

As a result of our series of friendly and informal 
conferences and a goodly amount of questioning, 
he had now given me, at one time and another, a 
fairly complete account of his life in college, with 
sudden and illuminating glimpses of the world 
from which he had come. Before proceeding 
with the original plans I prepared for my own 
guidance a connected account, in his own words, 
of his story as he had given it to me. I was more 
than ever convinced that this story would be a 
greater help and a safer guide to young men 
than any mere record of the difficulties to be met 
and the possible methods of meeting them. At 
my very earnest request he therefore gave his 
consent to allow it to be placed before the gradu- 
ates of his university and it was published in in- 
stalments in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, 

Its appearance there has aroused much favor- 
able comment and discussion. Apart from the 
information conveyed to the young man strug- 
gling against difficulties for admission to the uni- 
versity world, and apart from its value as a human 
document, it gave so new and significant an 
answer to the question so frequently put: "What 



xii PREFACE 

is a college education worth?" and "What does 
it cost?" that numerous requests have been re- 
ceived for its publication in permanent form. 
To these requests from many unknown friends 
the original narrator has now generously acceded, 
and the story in its present form is printed with 
his permission and sanction. For the informal 
manner of presentation, the frequent use of slang, 
and the generally familiar style no further ex- 
planation or excuse is therefore offered, and it 
is, of course, understood that the expressions 
employed and the opinions offered are his and 
not mine. 

Although it may convey to the reader the im- 
pression that he is overhearing a private conversa- 
tion, I did not feel free to depart from the familiar 
colloquial tone employed by the original narrator. 
As eavesdroppers are the best listeners and as sto- 
ries, especially true stories of real life thus over- 
heard, have the added savor of stolen sweets, this 
will, we believe, work no hardship to the public. 
Sensitive readers are, however, reassured that they 
are now invited and accredited eavesdroppers, 
and the present writer hopes that the story here 



PREFACE 



Xlll 



frankly and faithfully recounted will afford them 
the same pleasure and satisfaction which he him- 
self experienced when in the same words and style 
it was first told him by his younger friend. 

Christian Gauss. 

Princeton, N. J., June, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. From Street Gamin to Freshman ... i 

II. Learning How to be a Freshman . . 21 

III. Fighting Against Odds 39 

IV. Devil and Deep Sea 61 

V. The Gay Young Sophomore 80 

VI. On the Defensive 96 

VII. With Compliments to Paddy .... 108 

VIII. Undergraduate Big Business . . . . 117 

IX. Don't Be a Turtle 136 

X. A Senior at Last 150 



Through College on 
Nothing a Year 

CHAPTER I 
FROM STREET GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 

The Finest Four Years of His Life 

You'd like to know what it feels like to go 
through college on nothing a year from home? 
It will be pretty hard to make any one under- 
stand who hasn't done it, and I'll have to tell 
you a good many things that I don't care to 
make public. But if you mean, "is it a hard 
thing to do?" or, "Am I sorry that I did it?" I 
can say right off the bat: "A thousand times no." 
So I want to tell you at the start, and I want to 
make it emphatic, that if at any time you get the 
idea that I have had a poor time in college, you 
get a false impression. In this little town and on 
this campus I have had the finest four years of 
my life, and I would not trade it for anything 



2 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

that ever came before, or, so far as I can see, for 
any four years that will ever come after. 

How did I ever get the notion of coming to 
college ? Well, that's pretty hard to say. There 
was a time in my life when I didn't know that 
such a thing as a college existed. I first learned 
that there were colleges from the sporting pages 
of the newspapers, and there were three of them 
that I heard about particularly, Yale and Har- 
vard and Princeton, not because they were the 
best universities, necessarily, but because their 
athletic teams received most space in the sport- 
ing columns that came under my eye. You 
must remember that for the most part we self- 
helpers are not the sons of alumni, and very 
often, in the world that we come from, there is 
no college man. That was my case. I was born 
and raised (if you can say that I was raised) in 
a somewhat disreputable Jersey suburb of New 
York, famous for its goats and slums. I came 
from the slums. I have just now come back 
from a slumming trip of the social-economics 
class. That trip didn't teach me anything. It 
was a dead loss. 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 3 

A New Heaven and a New Earth 

The East Side slums that we visited are not 
one, two, three with the slums in which I was 
brought up. I'd like to tell you a little about 
this, because one of the difficulties you men have 
in understanding us lies in the fact that you 
can't even imagine what the world looks like 
to us before we get here, and how different it 
looks to us when we leave. Four years here 
literally give us a new heaven and a new earth. 
That one change is worth all my college career 
cost me. And, as a matter of fact, it didn't cost 
me anything, because I should have had to earn 
my own way even if I had never come to Prince- 
ton. My education has been handed me on a 
gold platter. 

Yes, I was arrested twice. Each "prison term" 
was a one-night stand. It was during a very 
bad winter, and for three weeks we lived literally 
on bread and water, and occasionally that diet 
had to be simplified for a day or two. The com- 
bination of freezing and starving, and general 
low spirits while the father is going around look- 



4 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

ing for a job, tends to make you forget the some- 
what artificial distinction between meum and 
tuum. Why should we not be warm when 
others were and when down in the yards firemen, 
out of overflowing fire-boxes, were raking the red- 
hot coals, and when trains went through carry- 
ing cars so full that they overflowed with what 
would never be used? As children we used to 
pick up the loose bits or follow at a discreet dis- 
tance when they raked out the fires, put out the 
glow with snow or water, wait for it to cool, and 
bring home the half-burnt lumps of coke. 

My older brother and I were down along the 
tracks, and I was trudging along with what for 
me was a pretty heavy bag of half-burnt coal. 
The railroad detective came up from behind. 
We were afraid of him because he had killed his 
man. My brother noticed him and called to 
me to run; and we both dropped our bags and 
made off. I was a little fellow and it may be 
that I wouldn't have beaten him. But that 
race was not to be to the swift. He pulled his 
gun on us and yelled: "Stop, or I'll shoot." I 
stopped. My brother ran. The second shot 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 5 

hit his shoe and carried off his heel. He looked 
back, and, seeing that I was arrested, came back 
to keep me company. We were marched off. 
There was a queer mixture of brutality and 
solemnity about that trip to the office of the 
justice of the peace. Now and then the detect- 
ive helped me to make haste with his foot. He 
was trying to impress and frighten me, and all 
that I remember about that trip is kicks and 
"petty larceny" — words which my captor ut- 
tered very frequently and with an air of great 
importance. I took it that petty larceny must 
be some particularly expensive kind of coal. 

Now, to me this arrest wasn't complete. I 
wasn't handcuffed. I had previously believed 
that this was a regular part of the ceremony, 
and thought I was being discriminated against 
because I was a little fellow. Instead, the de- 
tective made us walk ahead and he came along 
behind, gun in hand. The justice of the peace, 
who I believe gets a certain amount for each case, 
had us locked up for the night in an old wooden 
station, where we took turns in trying to sleep 
on a splintered wooden bench. 



6 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

Oh, the other arrest wasn't much. It was 
merely for playing hookey. But it will help to 
make my point and give you my standpoint at 
that time if I tell you that my all-too-brief prison 
experiences were to me a kind of holiday and 
pleasant surprise. I had always been told that 
in prison men were fed on mouldy bread-crusts 
and water. You can imagine my pleasure when,, 
after having spent the night in a relatively warm 
room, they brought me in the morning a very 
huge-looking piece of bread and a cup of sweet 
coffee. Yes, "sweet coffee" was what we called 
coffee with sugar in it, for ours usually had 
none. In the afternoon after my nearly regular 
arrest I was out along the tracks again. These 
things, therefore, are a part of my background 
if you wish to see it as I saw it. 

Furthermore, it wasn't a hardship to work; I 
was used to that because I have done it since I 
was a child. At nine I drove a butcher's cart 
on a route with thirty-five customers. That was 
hard work because I wanted to be in the back 
lot playing baseball, and occasionally I handed 
some good woman some other good woman's 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 7 

sausage, which didn't bring me many kind words 
from the boss. When I was ten I worked in a 
cemetery all my spare time during the spring and 
summer and fall. I planted flowers on the graves, 
two plants for five cents; and watered the lit- 
tle garden plots around the monuments, twelve 
quarts for a nickel; and cut the grass around 
and upon the graves, fifteen cents a grave. Why 
do I remember those prices? Because they were 
the most important thing in my world. 

Now, of course this wasn't exciting for a boy 
and the environment wasn't cheerful. I tell it 
to you only that you will understand what the 
economists would call the state of the money 
market in my town when I was a boy. Cash 
wasn't easy. 

A little later I worked on a huckster's wagon 
at twenty-five cents a day, and I tell you they 
were long days. Nothing makes a day seem so 
long as work that you don't like. One day the 
boss, a big, burly chap who was angry because 
business had been poor, struck me a terrific 
blow in the kidney and I dropped into the wagon. 
As we were passing a farmhouse I evidently 



8 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

came to and groaned in the cart, for an old 
farmer came out and remonstrated. The boss 
excused himself, laid it to my misdeeds, and 
drove on out of sight. Then he accused me of 
having played the baby act, swore some, knocked 
me insensible again, and left me in the road. 
He still owes me two days' pay. Now, you must 
remember that we make our money a good deal 
easier than that when we get to college, but we 
need more money than I did then. But I merely 
want to let you know why a dollar looks as big 
as your head to us before we get here. 

But how did I get the notion of coming to 
college? Well, I'm coming to that. You must 
let me tell my story in my own way. I suppose 
as a little chap I went to school because it was 
pleasanter at school than it was to stay around 
in my neighborhood, and my mother was off 
working most of the time. I liked it at school; 
it was a kind of holiday and I hated the idea 
of leaving it. 

So I went on into the high school after a 
stormy family council in which I agreed to pay 
my expenses and my board at home. Incident- 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 9 

ally, I couldn't quite swing that proposition, and 
there were arrearages before I got through. That's 
why I came down to college with so little ready 
cash. In the high school I began to hear and 
think more about colleges, though without any 
intention of ever going there. I imagined that 
every man in college was a big athlete. I had a 
notion they were all great, strong fellows, all 
over six feet tall, because the only pictures of 
college men I had seen were pictures of athletes. 
Then as I went along in the school I found that 
one or two of the teachers there were college men; 
one of them was a Princeton man. I happened 
to be making a good record and he began to talk 
college to me. That was the beginning. The 
idea grew on me, and it had the fascination of 
something far off. About the same time some- 
body told me about an Indian who had gone 
through Princeton on seventy-five dollars a year 
and a blanket given him by the government. 
That didn't sound so bad. By the way, did you 
ever hear about that redskin? He sure was a 
good Indian. I looked him up after I got here, 
for I had come to look upon him as a kindred 



io COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

spirit, but discovered that, like other good In- 
dians, he was a myth. The good as well as the 
evil that men do seems to live after them, even 
if they never did it at all, and he was partly 
responsible for my coming here just the same. I 
finally got the "hot dope" as to what I would 
really be up against from a young Princeton 
graduate, a very fine fellow. I made up my 
mind I was going to do what the Indian had 
done. So much for that for the present. 

I spoke of how large the dollar looks to us 
when we first come to college. The university 
doesn't understand that and it can't be expected 
that it should. No university does. You question 
that? Well, let me try to make my point. And 
at the same time I shall be getting into my story. 

When I came to Princeton in the fall I came 
with three dollars in my pocket. To me that 
was a lot of money, because it was all I had. 
That is, three dollars over my railroad fare here 
and back; and let me call to your attention also 
that this ride to Princeton, even if it was only 
fifty miles, was to me what a trip to California 
would be to some of the other fellows. It was 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN n 

the longest ride I had ever taken, because I had 
only been in a train twice before, both times for 
very short rides, I mean five or ten miles; and 
a ride on the New York elevated was to me an 
excursion. That trip to Princeton was an ex- 
perience. I had heard about the beautiful sce- 
nery that you see from the trains. I thought 
this must be some of it and enjoyed it immensely. 
I thought the strip of woods that we came through 
as we drew near Princeton on that September 
day was the most beautiful scenery I had ever 
seen, and Princeton itself and the buildings 
were like a city in a dream. I came down with 
another chap who was taking his preliminary 
examinations, and was told that we could get a 
" cheap' ' room on Chambers Street with a Mrs. 
X. We made for Chambers Street. I was busi- 
ness manager of our partnership and I asked 
about the rooms. She showed us a very small 
room with one bed for both of us, and she wanted 
three dollars for the two nights. You think 
that's cheap? It wasn't cheap for me. When I 
was on the huckster's wagon room-rent didn't 
cost me anything, because I didn't have any room. 



12 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I slept in a hay-loft. They used to allow me 
fifteen cents for supper and breakfast. So I 
shook the dust of Chambers Street from my 
feet. I honestly thought the woman was trying 
to "do" me. 

A Lodging for the Night 

The first night after our examinations the 
other fellow and myself bought a couple of news- 
papers and walked, or rather stumbled, along the 
railroad tracks to that little six-by-eight waiting- 
room where the railroad crosses the turnpike at 
Penn's Neck. It was pitch-dark and was rain- 
ing hard. Of course I had my best clothes on and 
so took of! my coat because I didn't want to 
get it wrinkled, spread out the papers, and lay 
down on the bench in the Penn's Neck station 
and tried to sleep. But one of the window-panes 
was broken and the rain came driving in. I 
took a newspaper and tried to shut out the 
storm, but it was dark, and we had no matches, 
and couldn't make it stay. We stuffed loose 
paper into the broken pane, but it got soft and 
melted and the rain came splashing in on us all 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 13 

night long. Still it would have been all right, 
but every train that came in from the junction 
stopped in front of the station because they saw 
us lying on the benches and thought we were 
prospective passengers. So if my rest was broken 
it wasn't only because the bench was hard. I 
was used to that. 

Now, the next day I was busy morning and 
afternoon, and the other fellow had some hours 
off, so I sent him out scouting, and the second 
night (it was still raining) we walked down what 
I have since learned to be Alexander Street, 
and down there in the Basin somewhere we found 
a ramshackle deserted house, spread our papers 
on the floor, and tried to sleep. A man with a 
lantern approached, and we thought we would 
either be arrested or have to fight for it. But 
the danger passed and "Moscow's walls were 
safe again." 

We finished our exams the next morning and 
I decided to celebrate. We bought two loaves 
of bread and a pound of bologna sausage, went 
over behind the cemetery on Witherspoon Street, 
and had a grand feast. 



i 4 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

Apparent Failure 

Things were going fine, but when the results 
of the examinations came out my name, unlike 
Abou Ben Adhem's, didn't head the list of the 
admitted candidates posted in the west end of 
McCosh. It was not on the list at all, and I 
thought it was all up. But I saw some notice 
about an entrance committee and asked what it 
meant. I realized that I had some chance to 
make a bicker and I'll tell you I was dead in 
earnest about getting into Princeton. So I de- 
cided I'd go up and talk to the profs. I went 
over to where the committee on examinations 
was sitting. There was a big crowd of disap- 
pointed candidates like myself waiting, and I 
noticed that they were calling them up one by 
one. You can't imagine what "a professor" 
meant to me. In those days to me he was not 
only a rare bird, he was a kind of demigod. In 
all my life I had only seen one college professor 
on the hoof. That one came to our high school 
to give an elocution recital when I was a junior. 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 15 

The Council of the Gods 

Well, here I was in a room full of Princeton 
professors! They were sitting around a table 
and it looked to me like the council of the gods 
on Mount Olympus. 

Now, the man who knows the life of the streets 
can tell more about human psychology than the 
other fellows. Any newsboy in New York can 
size up a man far better than the average senior 
in college. He knows what the chances are of 
getting a nickel from this fellow or that fellow 
before he asks, and if he is thrown down it isn't 
because he doesn't often expect to be thrown 
down, but because he is willing to take the long 
chance. 

Now, the students who had flunked their ex- 
aminations were going up in order, the "A's " first. 
I scanned the faces as each one came out, and I 
could tell whether he had been turned down 
cold or whether he had been given some hope, 
and it was plain to me that only a few of those 
fellows then coming out were being admitted on 
trial. So I thought I had a poor chance. But 



16 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

things were moving very slowly. After a couple 
of hours they were only up to the "E's," and I 
saw that at that rate my turn at the end of the 
alphabet wouldn't come up till the next day. 

I began to be afraid I'd have to buy another 
bologna and stay another night. It seems funny 
to you? That's my point exactly; the university 
can't understand that it is a pretty serious busi- 
ness to the fellow who comes with a couple of 
dollars. I was desperate, and decided that I had 
to put my case very soon. They were calling 
for E's. I went up and said my name didn't 
begin with "E," but I told them I didn't have 
money enough to stay over in Princeton another 
night and asked them if they wouldn't consider 
my case then. They were very nice about that 
and said they would. So I began to give them 
the straight dope. I couldn't understand why I 
had failed because I had been valedictorian of 
my class. How should I know that the school 
was not up to the standard? In competing with 
fellows from other high schools, I subsequently 
learned that it was not, but, even so, I won't 
blame it all on the school. 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 17 

Now, I have tried to let you know that my 
coming to Princeton to pass the examinations 
was to me no small matter. I had worked hard 
to get down here, had been soaking wet for two 
days, hadn't had much sleep, and I was a nervous 
wreck, but didn't know it, because I didn't know 
what that was. Where I came from nobody 
knew that he was a nervous wreck. If that's 
what he was, he thought he had something 
else. 

The committee explained to me that I hadn't 
passed a sufficient number of examinations to be 
admitted, even on probation. They were sorry. 
Now, can you imagine what it would have been 
like for me to have to go back to my home and 
say that I couldn't get in? So I put my case 
before them just as plainly as I could. I put it 
this way: Gentlemen, why don't you give me a 
chance? If I don't make good by Thanksgiving, 
it won't hurt the university; if I do make good, 
it will help me. 

One of the professors spoke up. I don't know 
who he was, but he was a fine chap. " I am very 
sorry, Mr. X, that we can't make any excep- 



ig COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

tions. We ourselves are governed by certain 
definite rules from which we cannot deviate. 
However, we shall take up your case at a special 
meeting of the committee and let you know by 
telegraph." To me it was a very nice way of 
saying "So long." But I took the train and 
went home, and, thinking it was all up, I an- 
swered thirty "ads" in the New York Herald 
that night and the next morning, "ads" for jobs 
of all kinds. 

The Telegram "Collect" 

A couple of days later I got a telegram col- 
lect. It ran: "Entrance committee have de- 
cided to admit you on trial. Report Monday." 
I still have that telegram, and know it came col- 
lect, because I had to borrow forty-five cents to 
pay for it. 

Well, say ! You don't know what that meant 
to me. You could have knocked me down with 
a feather ! So I was in ! I packed my hand-bag. 
It was a black cardboard hand-bag, three years 
old, originally costing ninety-eight cents. At 
that time it was split at the edges and was held 



FROM GAMIN TO FRESHMAN 19 

together by a ten-cent book-strap. I threw into 
it a shirt, a suit of underwear, a comb, a pair of 
socks, a looking-glass, and shaving apparatus. 
I had only the one suit, which I was then wear- 
ing. My new two-dollar-and-fif ty-cent trunk was 
to follow me down with the rest of my effects, 
and fittings for my room as soon as I had es- 
tablished an address. 

I thought a great university, like any other in- 
stitution, opened for business at eight o'clock, so 
I took the six-o'clock train from the Penn Sta- 
tion, and arrived in Princeton at seven forty-five. 
I waited till eight o'clock and walked over to the 
university offices and tried the door. It was 
locked. I sat down on a bench under the trees 
at the west end of Nassau Hall. I must have 
been a queer sight on the front campus with my 
strapped cardboard grip, my curled trousers and 
colored cap. College had opened on the previous 
Thursday and all freshmen were now in regular 
freshman garb. Any one else would have known 
that it was anathema for a freshman to wear 
cuffed trousers and a colored cap, but about such 
college taboos I, of course, knew nothing. 



20 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

But I didn't think of my looks. I was a fresh- 
man in Princeton. 

Do you remember in the play, when Monte 
Cristo is taken for dead and thrown off the cliff 
in the bag, how he cuts himself out of the bag, 
swims over to the island, climbs up on land, and 
shouts: "The world is mine!" 

Well, after I got here from my one-horse town 
with my little satchel and found myself sitting 
on the front campus, which now belonged partly 
to me, I felt like the Count of Monte Cristo. 
A new world was mine. I felt as if I owned Nas- 
sau Hall. It was pretty fine, too fine to last. 
Pretty soon I began to feel worried. What 
would it be like, and where was I going to sleep 
that night? 



CHAPTER II 
LEARNING HOW TO BE A FRESHMAN 

First Impressions 

It was some proud moment. The worry didn't 
last long, though it had a way of coming back 
many times before I was finally settled. I was 
sitting on the front campus, and it was a won- 
derful day, beautiful — one of those fine late sum- 
mer days that are going to turn out real hot. I 
had gone to the offices and learned, to my sur- 
prise, that they were not to be open till nine 
o'clock, so I had an hour before me and lots to 
look at and think about. 

What did I think of the students? Well, at 
first I was disappointed, to tell the truth. And, 
to be perfectly honest with you, the joke was 
on me. After what had happened I was just a 
little bit proud to be in, and before I got here 
I thought I would be a novelty to these boys, 
that they would pay me some attention, for I'm 

21 



22 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

not a very big fellow and I had expected to find 
them big, athletic six-footers. Some of them 
were only my size, and all of them left me to 
myself. That hurt my pride. I watched them 
sauntering up the walk, most of them in their 
white flannels, and saw them come up to each 
other, through the shadows of the old trees, 
and shake hands. They were laughing and very 
friendly. I couldn't hear what they said, but 
they did it so often that to me it seemed artificial. 
Pretty soon two of them met just a little in front 
of me and I heard their conversation. 

"Mighty glad to see you. Where have you 
been? Have you had a pleasant summer ?" 

And then "Excuse me," and he turned around 
to some other fellows and went through the 
same rigmarole. Now, when you meet a fellow 
in the city you grasp his hand down low. This 
fellow held it a little high. And the hand-shake 
struck me as dainty. Now, that particular chap 
was just a little effeminate, but to me every stu- 
dent was as yet typical, and as I sat there I saw 
man after man stop and shake hands with the 
fellows passing. The spirit was much friendlier 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 23 

than what I had been used to, but I must confess 
it struck me as affected. I found that, after a 
year or two, coming back to college, I was doing 
the same thing myself. 

Press Your Clothes— Twelve Dollars a 

Year 

But, after all, the boys passing by as I sat 
alone on my bench made me feel just a little out 
of it, and then I saw a chap not quite so well 
dressed as the others (this, of course, struck me) 
circulate through the crowd, go up to one man 
after another and talk to him, and finally bring 
out a note-book and write something in it and 
move on. What could this mean? He came to 
where I sat and stood in front of me. Well, 
would you believe it? That fellow had the nerve 
to ask me if I wouldn't sign up for the Students' 
Pressing Establishment ! It was only six dollars 
a term, twelve dollars a year. He must have 
been anxious for business, and if I hadn't seen him 
sign up the other fellows I would have thought 
that he was making fun of me. But as he'd 
been nice I thought I'd be nice, too. So I told 



24 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

him I'd always pressed my own clothes before 
and expected to keep on doing it. Why did he 
ask me? Oh, I was pretty well togged out and 
he could see by the green in my eyes that I was 
a freshman, and I have learned since that every 
man with a business scheme like this lies in wait 
for the freshman. 

Altogether, it was a very full and interesting 
hour. Now and then thoughts of my room 
swam into my head, but these thoughts were 
casual and just flitted through my mind. Oc- 
casionally I thought about what would happen 
when I registered. Pretty soon the bell struck 
nine. I started. I got up and asked a student 
where to register. He pointed out the door. 
It was in the University Offices building, since 
named Stanhope Hall. Was I frightened? No, 
not at all. I was used to asking for what I wanted. 
I walked into the offices as I'd walk in to ask for 
a job. I told the man at the desk my name, and 
he pulled out an ordinary class schedule and 
asked me what courses I was going to take. In 
my high school there hadn't been any electives. 
There was the academic and the commercial 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 25 

course. I didn't know what an elective was. 
So, when he asked me what courses I'd take, I 
told him I thought I'd take the regular course. 
Now, what you take as a freshman depends, of 
course, upon what you offer for entrance. But 
I had been so busy trying to get in, and inci- 
dentally had been so completely misinformed by 
people who knew nothing about Princeton, that 
I had given this no thought. So he asked me 
a few questions, underlined certain sections of 
the schedule with a pencil, and, when he_had 
planned my work, handed it to me. 

That Complicated Schedule 

Did you ever see those cartoons by Goldberg 
in The Mail, "What are you going to do with it, 
now you've got it?" And the answer is: "Search 
me!" That was the situation. I had my sched- 
ule, but I didn't know what to do with it or 
what it meant, so I put it in my pocket and 
walked away. Then I went up to a man, "H," 
who was passing. Now, "H" was the first hard- 
looking specimen that I had met in this place, 
and he was a sophomore. I was, of course, a 



26 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

freshman, but didn't know as yet that I was sup- 
posed to quake before him. If I had known it, 
I would have done it. But I didn't know. So 
I showed him the paper and asked him what 
"D," "M," and "P" meant. This, of course, 
gave me away and advertised the fact that I was 
a freshman. But he gave me no trouble, told 
me that "D" meant Dickinson Hall, and even 
pointed out the direction and explained how to 
get there. 

I wanted to think it over. I was anxious to 
go to class, but there were many things on my 
mind. What was I going to do for a room? 
Then, too, I had left home, as you will remember, 
at six — that is, without breakfast. And while I 
was sitting there on the front campus I was too 
much interested to think about it. But I thought 
about it now and decided I'd do without and save 
the money. That settled one point. But the 
room question was on my mind. So, on the 
principle "business before pleasure," I decided 
that I'd have to settle that too. Have you ever 
been away where you don't know a soul and 
where you know you have to stay for some time ? 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 27 

I was beginning to feel like that and walked up 
and down trying to decide. 

Then a curious thing happened, and a mighty 
nice one. As I turned around a fellow (we'll 
call him "L") came up to me with a very pleas- 
ant smile and "Hello, X!" He was the only 
man in Princeton that I knew. I say "knew," 
though I had seen him only twice before in my 
life. He came from the town next mine. I 
think now that he must have known that I was 
in a pickle, and he had too much of the milk of 
human kindness in him to turn even a dog away. 
He asked me: "Where are you staying?" I 
said: "I don't know; I was just going to look for 
a room." He took my satchel, gave me his ad- 
dress, and passed on. I wanted to get settled, 
so I went over to the treasurer's office and asked 
for a room, a cheap room. He said he had noth- 
ing but one-hundred-dollar rooms left. I thought 
he was trying to insult me. I felt badly about 
it and began to walk around town, hunting for 
a place. There was not much assortment for the 
price I could pay, and by noon I had found noth- 
ing. I was disappointed and hungry, went into 



28 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

a butcher shop, bought some bologna, and again 
went down Witherspoon Street near the ceme- 
tery, away from the crowd, to eat and reflect. 

That afternoon was a long one and I had no 
better success. The day had kept the promise 
of the morning and it was hot. You must re- 
member that I was the first man who ever came 
to Princeton from my school, and, outside of "L/' 
I knew no one at all. What made it hard was 
the fact that everybody seemed to be acquainted 
with everybody else and nobody knew me. My 
home was not a luxurious one, but home is home, 
and I wanted to be there. Yes, I was homesick 
in those first days; I wanted to be back home 
that first afternoon; and off and on for many 
days, yes, weeks. At the high school I had 
known almost everybody and, I dare say, was 
fairly well liked by the fellows. I had a boy's 
respect for the opinion of my teachers, and now 
when I couldn't find a room at what seemed 
to me a reasonable price, and when everything 
seemed so strange, I remembered what had hap- 
pened when I told the principal that I had made 
up my mind to go to Princeton. He shook his 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 29 

head and said: "Well, X, I like your spunk, but 
I give you six months as an outside limit." My 
spunk was pretty much gone and I was thinking 
of that outside limit. 

Before coming back to Princeton that Mon- 
day morning I owned, all told, in my own right, 
nine dollars and seventy-five cents, and, except 
for what my bologna had cost me, I still had it 
with me, though I was afraid from what I had 
learned about the price of rooms that it and I 
would soon be parted. Prices seemed to me 
frightfully high. I had imagined I heard a man 
say that he had paid fifteen cents for a banana. 
I must have been mistaken, of course. But the 
money question was a terribly important one, 
and I was trying to decide how I could get my 
books, my room, and my board paid far enough 
ahead to give me a chance to find some work to 
do. It didn't look promising, and evening was 
coming on. 

Just before dinner (supper I called it then) 
I met "L" again. He greeted me like an old 
friend. That helped. 

"Where are you going to eat?" he asked. 



3 o COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I told him I thought I'd go out and buy some- 
thing. 

"Why don't you come to' the commons?" he 
put in. 

"What's that?" 

"That's where we eat." 

"What does it cost?" I asked. 

"You don't have to pay; you just sign for it." 

"Take me to the place," was all I said. 

Now, I don't want you to think that I was a 
money-grabber. But I tried to explain to you 
that a dollar looked mighty big to me in those 
days. In the town that I came from, where 
everybody was fighting for money, money is the 
big thing in the world. One of the finest things 
that my college career has done for me was to 
put the money question in its proper place in 
my life. We all want money, of course. We all 
need it. But money has long ceased to be the 
tin god it used to be. There are other more im- 
portant things in the world for me now. 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 31 

Familiarity Breeds Contempt 

Well, there were many other things that I 
had to learn as a freshman. I had never been in 
a boarding-house in my life. I knew that these 
boys lived in a different way from the one to 
which I was accustomed, and I had sense enough 
to know that it was a better way than mine, and 
therefore made up my mind that I was going 
to keep my eyes open and watch them. So I 
went to the commons and watched "L" and the 
other students. The only reason I didn't tuck 
my napkin into my collar was because he didn't. 
There are times when it would be pretty hard 
to learn good table maimers at commons. You 
couldn't expect a crowd of lusty young chaps 
always to be proper, but in the first month man- 
ners at commons were fine. The fellows put on 
their best because they were strange to each 
other and were on their good behavior. No- 
body knows as yet at whom he dares throw a 
biscuit, and so it doesn't occur to him to throw 
one at anybody. It is the familiarity that breeds 
the contempt. But I learned my manners there. 



32 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I signed for my meal, but I also learned that it 
cost five dollars and fifty cents a week, and that 
struck me as exorbitant. I had felt awkward at 
commons with "L," because I knew that he 
knew how these men lived and I knew that I 
didn't. He wasn't poor like myself. 

A Friend in Need 

After supper we walked out to the street to- 
gether. It was growing dusk. I looked at the 
quaint little shops beginning to light up, and on 
the other side of the street there were some fel- 
lows with their hands on each other's shoulders, 
singing. But it didn't cheer me. I saw that 
for me it was going to be pretty hard. I hadn't 
yet found a room. 

"Where are you going to stay?" he asked me. 

I told him I hadn't found a place. 

"You come along with me," and he took me 
by the arm and led me to his room. 

"Here's where you sleep to-night." 

It was the first time anything so good had 
ever been done for me by a comparative stranger. 
I could almost have cried. It was the first special 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 33 

mark of kindness I encountered at Princeton, 
and I shall remember it as long as I live. The 
room he took me to looked awfully well to me. 
Compared to the one I was used to, it was very 
fine. He had carpets or rugs, and to me a carpet 
was a thing for a parlor. When I studied at 
home in the winter I had to put my feet up on 
the stove because the floors were so cold. Yet 
he apologized for the looks of his room and said 
his things were still on the way. Now, I want to 
tell you that it was a mighty fine thing of "L" 
to take me in, especially as he hardly knew me, 
and as he had only a single bed, which he shared 
with me. 

I got up early. He went out to his breakfast 
and classes and I walked around the town. In- 
cidentally, I was getting cuts for my absences 
from class, though that didn't bother me because 
I didn't know what cuts were. Somehow by a 
kind of natural instinct I seemed to gravitate 
toward the poorer quarter of town. Outside of 
the short section of the main street, that was all 
I had seen; and every time I walked down Wither- 
spoon Street I was greatly surprised to see what 



34 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

a one-horse town this was. For this was the only 
section of it I had yet noticed. A little later I 
was walking along Vandeventer Avenue looking 
for signs in the windows, and I saw one — "Rooms 
Rented." I walked in. It was the house of a 
retired minister. Both he and his wife came to 
the door. They, too, received me as if I had been 
a friend. In spite of "L's" kindness, that lump 
was still in my throat, I still had the lost-boy 
feeling. And it didn't finally wear off until I 
had really become one of the crowd. But that 
was not to be for some days. When this old 
minister came up and shook hands the tears al- 
most came to my eyes. I made up my mind that 
they were mighty fine people, and I have always 
kept that opinion. They seemed to take an in- 
terest in me, asked me my name and plans. 
They had two rooms, the cheaper one two dol- 
lars a week. I told them my situation and that 
I couldn't afford it, and they gave it to me for 
one dollar and fifty cents. It was a little cubby- 
hole of a room, 6x8x9, and, although they were 
very good to me, somehow I felt cooped up there, 
and at the end of the first term, with much re- 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 35 

gret, I left them. But for the present I was set- 
tled, though my trunk had not yet come. I went 
back to the campus feeling much better. 

Horsing Freshmen 

They were horsing freshmen. Pretty soon a 
fellow comes up to me. 

"Are you a freshman?" (You must remem- 
ber, I was committing the unforgivable sin of 
wearing a soft shirt, gay tie, and colored cap.) 
I said: "I am." 

"QuaHfying," he asked, "or come from another 
college ?" 

"No." 

"What are you doing with that shirt on?" 

"Wearing it," I said. I thought he was im- 
pertinent. He thought I was fresh. I guess he 
was right. 

"Don't you know freshmen aren't allowed to 
wear soft shirts?" I didn't, so he advised me 
to go home and change it. I didn't like the ad- 
vice, so I walked around the corner of the build- 
ing and came back and looked him squarely in 
the eye, the way a boy looks at the policeman 



36 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

who has chased him away from the fire. I wanted 
to see the fun and he didn't bother me. That 
is, he didn't bother me just then; my turn came 
later. But, for the moment, I innocently thought 
that I had him bluffed. 

At dinner-time, when I was walking up Nassau 
Street, I saw around the corner from the com- 
mons another freshman, "Y," my classmate, 
now a well-known broad-jumper. He had been 
"requested" to take off his coat, and now, in 
his shirt-sleeves, with a tissue-paper skirt around 
his waist, was doing a Salome dance. I must 
say in all fairness to him that he is a far bet- 
ter broad-jumper than Salome dancer. But the 
sophs weren't particular. I stopped to enjoy it. 
Pretty soon that same sophomore who had met 
me on the campus came up. "Look at the 
freshman !" and they all turned my way, and 
broke out in a chorus of long-drawn-out " Ohs !" 
They made a ring around me. 

"Take off that coat, freshman 1" I didn't like 
to, because the lining was ripped and the sleeves 
soiled. But I did. And I want to say right 
now that not one of them made fun of my torn 



LEARNING TO BE A FRESHMAN 37 

coat. I would have hit any one of them, if 
he had. 

"Now, freshman, hang it up on that hook," 
and he pointed. I fell for it. 

" Where's the hook?" I asked. 

"You're pretty fresh," was the answer. 

Then I saw the point. So I suspended my 
coat on the air and let it fall, much to their 
amusement. They then made me put on my 
coat "right," that is, with the lining outside, and 
another fellow said: "Here, freshman, milk that 
cow," and gave me a bicycle. 

I milked the sprocket. 

But somehow it was all good fun and I rather 
liked it. They were paying some attention to 
me, anyway, and pretty soon I broke away, went 
into a dormitory, dressed again as best I could, 
and went home. And, except for that one little 
incident about my coat, I enjoyed the horsing as 
much as they did. 

Now, there are lots of things against horsing, 
and I may tell you some later, but there is one 
good thing to be said for it. It is a good thing, 
especially for the lost fellow like myself, because 



38 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

it brings the boys together. They get excited, 
talk over their experiences, and it breaks the ice. 
The horsing I received from the sophs was the 
first thing I had in common with my classmates. 
I began to feel like one of the rest of them and 
the homesickness was beginning to wear off. 

Was I still worried about the financial situ- 
ation? Yes, but that's another story. 



CHAPTER III 
FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 

Getting Started 

Did I have a job? No, not yet. But I was 
beginning to like it here, to think that it was 
worth while. At first I had been doubtful, but I 
decided now that I would do everything I could 
to make it go. I had established myself in my 
room. It was small, though comfortable enough 
for the present, and it was a place that I could go 
to and rest and feel myself myself. You know 
what I mean. In the crowd I was still more or 
less lost and my room was a kind of (I suppose I 
might as well say it) sanctuary. I was eating 
at commons and was earning part of my board 
there. My work consisted of dishing out desserts 
or taking charge of a tobacco-and-candy stand. 
This privilege I had received by applying to 
the undergraduate chairman of the dining halls 
committee. 

39 



4 o COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I had decided I would stay. I walked over, 
went to class, and called it square. It was in 
Dickinson Hall and I was a little late. The 
professor was talking away at a very rapid rate, 
and it was hard for me to understand mathe- 
matics even when a man talked slowly. My 
preparation in advanced algebra wasn't good, 
and of trigonometry I knew little more than that 
there was such a thing. What he said was way 
above me. Incidentally, the feeling that this in- 
tellectual world was beyond me, or rather that I 
wasn't up to it, stayed with me all year. This 
bothered me, and one of the hardest things I had 
to do was to work down that feeling. 

La Premiere Classe 

What struck me most in that class? I'll tell 
you. It was the grim impersonality of the whole 
method and system. That was the greatest 
change between my work at school and my work 
at college. At grammar and high school there 
was a very close relationship between the stu- 
dent and the teachers — I mean a personal inter- 
est on the part of the teachers in the student as 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 41 

an individual outside of the classroom. I don't 
mean the relation of the preceptor who meets a 
student at a social function. Up to this time 
my teachers had given me advice on the conduct 
of life. From this time on that was over. It 
seemed to me there was a chasm between the 
front row of benches and the teacher's desk, there 
was an invisible line between the student and the 
faculty. Each stayed in his own sphere. You 
don't feel that? Let me explain. As a fresh- 
man, and occasionally since, when I asked certain 
professors a question I had the feeling that I was 
putting a cent into a slot-machine and getting 
what I wanted, and in some cases I had no more 
feeling of intimacy or personal relationship than 
you have with the slot-machine. I don't mean 
that this was generally true or that it was true 
with regard to my preceptors. I have come to 
know some of them very well; but I mean that, 
coming from my own school, I had the feeling 
here that the student lived in a different world 
from his professor. There was a distance be- 
tween the two, and the impersonality of that re- 
lationship to me was at first forbidding, though 



42 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I soon began to work myself into the system. 
In my physics course the things I understood 
best were the jokes of the professor in charge, 
and he told some good ones. When, however, I 
tried to make myself interesting and tell them 
to members of the other classes, I found that I 
had been forestalled. He had done that himself. 
Everybody in college knew them. They were 
stock jokes and a part of the course. 

The First Preceptorial 

What did I think of my first preceptorial hour ? 
I liked it immensely. The system is one of the 
finest things about Princeton, but it seemed very 
odd to me as a freshman to be sitting in a pre- 
ceptor's room on a comfortable chair without 
any formality and trying to be natural. I had 
some excellent preceptors, one especially whose 
hour I particularly enjoyed, except for one thing. 
He knew many of the boys very well and called 
them by their nicknames. When he called them 
"Bill" and "Jack" and me "Mr." it made me 
feel more strongly that I wasn't one of the crowd. 
What pleased me most was the very uncere- 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 43 

monious and informal way we went about it. 
We lounged around; that is, they did and I tried 
to; we talked as we pleased and uttered our 
thought if we had one. Of course, as freshmen 
we had very few preceptors, since in most fresh- 
man subjects there are none. 

Do the teachers generally understand men 
like myself? No, and I don't blame them. I 
can give you a case in point. Nobody had any 
more good will toward me than this preceptor, 
yet one of the things that hurt me most hap- 
pened to me through him. He knew that I was 
working my way through and wanted to help 
me. One day he asked me to stop after the 
hour. He asked me, Would I do something for 
him? Of course I would, and gladly, because I 
felt that he was doing a great deal for me. He 
gave me a little note nicely wrapped up and 
asked me if I would stop at a certain shop which 
was on my way and leave that note. I was 
really much pleased to be able to do him a serv- 
ice. The shop was on the way to my next 
class and it was no trouble at all. I went in and 
gave the manager his note. He looked at me and 



44 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

said: "You can tell Professor B that I'll take 
care of the matter." And then he turned to me 
and said: "What's this quarter got to do with it? 
That doesn't belong to me; it must be yours." 
"No," I said, "it must be yours." He smiled 
and started to give me the twenty-five cents. I 
began to see the situation. My preceptor had 
sent me on this friendly errand as an excuse for 
giving me a quarter. I was terribly mortified. 
I told the manager: "No, you'll have to give that 
back to Professor B." I wanted money, to be 
sure, but I liked to earn it, and not receive it as 
charity. When the preceptor found out how mat- 
ters stood he apologized all over the lot. 



The Only Help I Ever Received 

I was keeping my eyes open for a job, a real 
job, I mean, and in the meantime I was working 
hard at my studies, for you will remember that, 
besides my regular work, I had five conditions. 
You ask me, "Didn't I get any help at all ? " Yes, 
I did. After I had been down here some weeks 
I had borrowed one hundred dollars through my 
mother, on condition that I pay back one hun- 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 45 

dred and fifty dollars the next summer. That 
was the only help I ever received. 

Well, that one hundred dollars came when I 
needed it most and I was dazed at the sight of it. 
It was the biggest sum I had ever seen. But lv 
the time it came I already owed more in Prince- 
ton than that. My bill had come from the 
treasurer's. Even though you room in town you 
pay your room-rent through the university of- 
fices. Now, my bill for tuition, board, room-rent, 
library fee, laboratory fee, infirmary fee, gym fee 
(I didn't know there could be so many fees), had 
more than eaten up my hundred. I paid some 
sixty-odd dollars to the treasurer on account, and 
what little remained left me so fast that I couldn't 
see it for dust. I was soon very deeply in debt 
and had only made a start. You can imagine 
whether that worried me or not. No, I hadn't 
spent much for clothes. I did need a freshman 
outfit, and as prices around here were pretty high 
I had it sent from home and saved several dollars 
by doing so. What other shoes and clothes I had 
to buy then and through part of my next year I 
bought in the second-hand shops on Witherspoon 
Street. I did that because I had to. 



46 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

That Elusive Job 

Well, I was in debt and desperate for a job. 
Soon after I came here I heard about the Stu- 
dents' Self -Help Bureau and had registered with 
them. They had their office, in those days, on 
Nassau Street, in the rooms of the Graduate 
Council. That feeling of desperation about my 
financial situation drove me nearly frantic. Now, 
I want to say a word right here about the bu- 
reau. There have been two secretaries in my 
time, both of them certainly the right men for 
the right place. Most important of all, they were 
both cheerful, and I think that is about the first 
requirement for a secretary of the bureau. A 
man who goes there is a man in trouble. He's 
gloomy; and you mustn't imagine that there are 
more jobs than men who want them. There are 
never enough jobs to go around. I often went 
there at the beginning of my freshman year and 
was told that there was nothing doing. But 
I never went there without getting a certain 
amount of cheering up, and I needed that as much 
as I needed money. Well, I had seen the sign, 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 47 

I knew the place, and made up my mind to go 
in. Did I feel backward about it? No, not at 
all. Why should I have felt so? As I said be- 
fore, I was used to asking for what I wanted and 
equally used to being turned down. I will give 
you one instance. 

Auld Lang Syne 

As far back as the summer before I entered 
the high school I thought I'd like to give up 
fruit-and-vegetable peddling and get something 
else to do. I was about fourteen, and I used to 
leave home to get over to New York about 5 a. m., 
buy a World, a Journal, or any other paper not 
costing more than a cent, look over the "help 
wanted," pick the place that looked best among 
the "boy wanted" ads, and then start on the 
rounds. 

I went early because there were usually fifty 
fellows waiting at these places, strung out like 
a bread-line. The job I was after in this case 
was in a printing-house on Park Place. I had 
come early in order to be first, and sat down on 
the door-step. Now, boys brought up like my- 



48 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

self get a good deal of worldly wisdom too soon. 
But curiously enough what I had learned at 
school made a strangely profound impression on 
me. It comes to us from another world. I had 
been told in school that if you were patient 
you would get things, and so I used to think in 
all seriousness that, if I only waited, what I 
wanted would come to me merely because I was 
being patient. Now, that was always hard for 
me, so I came early and waited on the door-step 
with a sense of virtue. After about an hour a 
large, burly negro with a broom in his hand 
came up, unlocked the door, and asked me what 
I wanted. 

"I want to see the manager.'' 

"What do you want to see the manager 
about?" 

I thought he was too inquisitive for a sweeper, 
and determined not to tell. 

"I'll tell the manager when I see him," and I 
walked in. 

"You don't want to see the manager," he said, 
"what you want is a job." 

With that he dropped the broom, took me by 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 49 

the collar of my coat with one hand and by the 
seat of my trousers with the other, and lifted me 
out of the place. I think I can give you an idea 
of just exactly how I felt. As I was being bod- 
ily hoisted out, I had that sinking sense you 
get when you go up in an elevator for the first 
time. 

So you can see that I had no hesitation about 
going up to the secretary of the Students' Self- 
Help Bureau. I knew perfectly well before I 
went in that, whatever might happen, he couldn't 
treat me any worse than that. I went in, and 
the long and short of it was he couldn't give me 
a job, though he did give me a smile and cheered 
me up. He did more than that, and I felt he was 
making a start. He gave me a slip on the strength 
of which I was to get a certain reduction on 
second-hand books at the university store. This 
question of books had troubled me. There were 
times when I couldn't buy a book I needed, and 
one of the things I regret most about my fresh- 
man year is that once I asked a preceptor to lend 
me his book and was refused. I left the bureau 
in better spirits and came back soon. The next 



50 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

time the secretary gave me a ticket for the foot- 
ball game. That, too, was a good thing, because 
watching the game allowed me to forget all my 
troubles. But I went back to the bureau almost 
daily and I am afraid I made myself a nuisance. 
It was through the secretary, however, that I 
got my first job, soon after. It was raking leaves 
at twenty cents an hour. It was a half-hour's 
walk each way, and I used to average about 
two and a half hours of work a day. The owner 
of the place treated us well — there was an- 
other fellow with me on the job. It was a relief 
to me to feel that I had begun to earn my way. 
In two weeks I had earned something like seven 
dollars. When that job was ended, however, 
I had nothing else to do and I was blue again. 
In class I seemed to be doing about as well as 
the other boys, but financially I wasn't doing 
well enough, and I was beginning to be afraid 
that the thing was going to be a failure, and I 
had some blue weeks after I finished raking leaves. 
Debts were climbing up. I don't know if I can 
make you understand this, but one of the things 
that kept me up and occasionally made me feel 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 51 

ashamed of myself was a talk I had once had 
with a negro at noon over our dinner when we 
were both working on the railroad. 

Out of the Mouths of 



He was about forty. At times a drunkard, a 
gambler, and a blacksmith. Also a philosopher. 
He told me that as a lad he had worked like a 
horse to get some money, put it into a fool busi- 
ness which he had started, made out well for 
a while, and then lost it all. And after he had 
finished telling me that story he said: "Well, 
son, I liked that work, and one of these days I'm 
goin' back to it. Yes, sah, I'm gom* back to it, 
because if yuh want to get along in this yere 
world no thin' beats a trial but a failure." Now, 
for a negro, that fellow had no yellow streak. I 
learned something from him, and I felt ashamed 
not to go at a thing as hard as that fellow whom 
most people would have called a good-for-noth- 
ing negro. That sentence of his, "Nothing beats 
a trial but a failure," ran in my head. I made 
up my mind that I was going to do my level 
best not to fail. But even if I failed, through no 



52 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

fault of mine, I'd go back and make another 
trial, and I made up my mind that if I was go- 
ing to get knocked like that negro I'd take my 
knocks as he did with a smile and have the world 
laugh with me rather than at me. 

Before my next job I had been without a cent — 
I mean literally without a cent — for two weeks. 
Then the secretary of the Self-Help Bureau gave 
me another job. It was for the Harvard foot- 
ball game of that year (191 1), and I was to sell 
programmes. When he showed me that pro- 
gramme I was disappointed. Why? For this 
reason. I looked at the programme and said to 
myself: "That's a ten-cent programme." That's 
what it was worth. I was to sell it for fifty cents. 
Now, I was to get five cents apiece for selling 
them, and I told the secretary that I didn't think 
the demand would be very great. "Well, if you 
are alive," he said, "you ought to sell one hun- 
dred and fifty. That's about what the other fel- 
lows do." When I got there I stood around near 
the gate for over an hour and sold two or three. 
The crowd wasn't rushing us off our feet to get 
those programmes. For some disappointing rea- 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 53 

son they seemed to be getting along perfectly 
well without them. I had made up my mind 
that I had to create the demand. I was afraid 
that if I didn't do this well the secretary wouldn't 
give me another trial. So I thought it over a 
bit and decided upon a scheme. The people 
were beginning to crowd through, and I noticed 
that a great many of them came in couples, a 
young man and a young lady. I knew enough 
to know that the young man couldn't refuse to 
buy what the young lady wanted, so I kept 
handing the programmes to the young ladies. 
They would unconsciously take what was handed 
to them and their escorts would quite consciously 
pay me for it. Now, that scheme won the day 
for me, and in the next half -hour I sold nearly one 
hundred programmes. Incidentally, I felt that I 
had justified myself with the secretary and I 
had five dollars of the easiest money that I had 
ever earned. However, as this wasn't enough to 
keep me afloat, I was willing to do work, yes, any 
kind of work, but I couldn't find the work to do, 
and the idea of my expenses was simply stagger- 
ing me. 



54 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

Unskilled Labor 

A little after the cold weather had begun I 
got my third job. I was to take care of a furnace 
in a professor's house. This meant a fairly steady 
job at seven dollars a month and for me a com- 
paratively easy one. I was to go twice a day, 
morning and evening. All that was very well, 
only I honestly didn't know a thing about a fur- 
nace. I had never seen one in action. One use- 
ful fact I did know — I knew only that there were 
various kinds of furnaces. I put that fact to 
hard use. When I went to the house the pro- 
fessor went down into the cellar with me and 
showed me the furnace. 

"Of course," he said, "you have taken care of 
a furnace before ? " 

What could I say? If I told him I hadn't I 
couldn't get the job. So I played safe and said: 

"You know, sir, that there are various kinds 
of furnaces.' ' 

"Yes," he said, "and I'll explain this one to 
you." 

That's what I wanted. I have taken care of 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 55 

many furnaces since and I owe that man a good 
deal. His cellar was my laboratory. I experi- 
mented on that furnace. Every day I'd try some- 
thing new — open a new draft or try a new way 
of checking — and I'm afraid that on warm days 
my good friend the professor roasted and on cold 
days he froze. I'm sorry for that, because he 
was kind and nice about it. But down in the 
cellar we had good times together, that furnace 
and I, and, on the strength of what I learned 
then, I got four other furnaces to take care of 
the next year. 

At Thanksgiving I went home. Christmas 
was coming on and things were looking blue. 

Making Money at Concerts 

Did I get any amusement? Yes, I always 
have done that. You mean anything special? 
Why, yes, I had to have some pleasure. Besides 
ordinary amusements, I went to lectures and I 
went to concerts ! I have to smile now when I 
think about the first philharmonic. No, I didn't 
know anything about music. I went for three 
reasons. The first and by far the most important 



56 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

was because it cost one dollar and fifty cents and 
students could get in free. I was making money ! 
In the second place, I was curious. I went to 
see what people were paying one dollar and fifty 
cents for. And in the third place — and this grad- 
ually came to be more and more important* — I 
wanted to get a liking for music. I have gone to 
all the concerts here, to the Whiting lectures and 
recitals every year, and I have learned to like 
music even though I don't know why I like it. 
Of course, I don't know technic, but it has come 
to mean a good deal to me and has been far more 
than a mere amusement. 

Winter was now here and the days were less 
cheerful. On the streets I always wore a smile. 
But when I sat at home in my room and watched 
the first snows blow down the street I was at 
times pretty glum. I remember sitting at my 
window and hoping it would snow hard. I thought 
it would bring me a chance to earn a little money 
shovelling paths. In December there was the 
first light snow-storm, and I did get a few such 
chances, but that didn't help much, and I couldn't 
count on it. 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 57 

Did I now have the feeling that I belonged 
here? No, I had the feeling that I didn't. The 
other fellows were better men than I, and I knew 
it. I couldn't really get into the crowd. I don't 
believe they knew it, at least I don't believe they 
could tell it from my talk, but when I was with 
them in crowds I somehow had the feeling that I 
would have in a parlor among ladies, and you 
might guess that I wouldn't feel at home there. 
This feeling of awkwardness was one of the big- 
gest handicaps I worked under. If I hadn't had 
it, it would have been much better and much 
easier for me. Work was coming in very slowly 
and expenses were climbing up. I didn't dare 
think of what I owed. Every week it was run- 
ning higher. Meantime I felt desperately blue, 
like that fellow in "Les Miserables" who is go- 
ing down in the quicksands and can't pull him- 
self out. 

Don't Worry 

When I had come here I went to the treasurer's 
office and explained my situation. I told them 
when they made out my university bill not to 



58 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

send it home. It wouldn't do them any good, 
for they would waste their postage and it would 
worry my people. They were to send it to me. 
They did. Those notices from the treasurer's 
office kept coming with distressing regularity, and 
every time one came I went to the office and paid 
them in excuses. That was all I had. One week 
— we were now running toward Christmas — they 
sent me their bill. I was so blue that I didn't 
dare think about it, so I put it in my pocket 
and thought I'd try to settle it when I could really 
face my own situation. Honestly, I didn't dare 
think about it. A little later a letter came from 
home enclosing a bill. It was my last bill from 
the treasurer and it was marked: "Copy; orig- 
inal sent to the student at his request." With it 
was a letter from my mother. She . was very 
much distressed and wondered why I could live 
so extravagantly and how I was going to get 
the money to pay for it all. That bothered me. 
I simply couldn't see ahead. If I tried, things 
went black before my eyes. I couldn't explain 
to the folks at home, but I wanted to ease their 
minds, so I sent back the shortest letter I ever 



FIGHTING AGAINST ODDS 59 

wrote in my life. "Don't worry." That was the 
letter. Why should they? I was doing that 
myself. 

A few hours later I felt a little better about 
it and went over to the office. I brought out 
the copy of the bill which my mother had sent 
me and laid it on the desk. I said: "Why did 
you send this home? I still have the original." 
Now, the treasurer has always treated me splen- 
didly, and the man at the desk answered: "Why, 
you weren't paying anything on it." I told 
him I didn't have it. I made arrangements with 
him that I was to pay him whatever I could 
whenever I could, and I did my best. He was 
very nice about it, and has always given me more 
leeway than I had a right to hope for. But with 
all the leeway I didn't see how I was ever going 
to catch up. I was falling so far behind the pro- 
cession that I couldn't hear the band. And it 
seemed to be getting worse instead of better. 
The holidays were coming on and it looked like 
a dreary Christmas. My work — I mean my 
studies— suffered, too. I used to sit in my room, 
read a couple of pages, and find that I had been 



60 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

reading words and not ideas. It looked bad, 
and I was awfully anxious to see the folks. It 
was some relief to think that the vacation was 
coming. I counted the days, and after my last 
long recitation hour I left for home. 



CHAPTER IV 

DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 

My visit at home and the holiday bucked me 
up and gave me a new lease of life. I had been 
a little homesick and in hard luck. But I didn't 
want to give up the ship and admit that I had 
been beaten, and to be pointed at on the streets 
of my home town as the man who had started to 
go to college and gave it up. I had the notion, 
and I think it's pretty nearly correct, that any- 
thing you don't carry through to some conclusion 
is going to stand out against you; and there was 
something else that drove me back. In those 
two weeks I saw again the old life that went on 
around me and which I would fall into if I stayed, 
and I couldn't help contrasting it with the life of 
men at college. Even my struggle there in those 
first hard months, as I looked back at it, seemed 
quite tolerable. I liked my studies, felt that I 
was getting into them, and didn't want to give 

6j 



62 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

them up. Besides, I saw that old teacher of 
mine who had given me six months, and I said to 
myself, "I'm going to fool you, anyway"; and 
took the train for Princeton. 

I arrived a few days after college opened. That 
treasurer's bill was still hanging over me. It 
was the sword of Damocles. But I had decided 
during the vacation that I wasn't going to leave 
the university unless I absolutely had to. 

Easy Money 

Before Christmas I had been working hard at 
my conditional studies and had passed off all 
but one of my entrance conditions. I was be- 
tween the devil and the deep sea. If I didn't 
study hard, and failed to pass my work, the uni- 
versity would flunk me out; and if I didn't work 
hard and earn money to pay my bills, the treas- 
urer would drive me out. So now that the studies 
were fairly well in hand I made up my mind that 
I was going to go out after other work. I had 
heard that there was a job to be had at twenty- 
five cents an hour. I made up my mind to try 
for it, for several reasons. I needed money badly, 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 63 

never needed it so badly in my life. And right 
here I'd like to say that any encouragement or 
help that is to be given to the man working his 
way through college ought to be given him in 
those months between September and Christ- 
mas of his first year. That's when he needs it 
most and when he is least able to earn money for 
himself, and when in all probability, like myself 
he will have most trouble with his studies. 

Now, twenty-five cents an hour was more 
money than I had ever earned, that is, steadily. 
Twenty cents I had earned for a while when 
I worked on the railroad in the summer of my 
junior year in the high school. To feel that I 
was earning twenty-five cents an hour regularly 
would help me to feel that I was going up in the 
world. I suppose you don't understand that. 
But that's the way it looked to me then. Now, 
this work was with the Students' Pressing Es- 
tablishment. It consisted in going about to the 
students' rooms collecting clothes, and bringing 
back from ten to twelve suits, which, after they 
had been pressed, I delivered again. I got that 
job, and that was really my first regular "situa- 



64 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

tion." Do you know how much ten or twelve 
suits weigh when you carry the coats on your 
arm and the trousers over your shoulder? Well, 
you can guess. Once I carried as many as seven- 
teen suits; yet I swear to you that knowing I 
was earning twenty-five cents an hour made the 
load light. It was the easiest way to earn money 
I had yet found. It paid most for doing least. 
I began to work four and five hours a day, some 
days eight, and at the same time I began to like 
college. 

But you must not imagine from that that the 
war was over. It had only begun. There were 
going to be many bad days, months — yes, I might 
even say there was going to be one more lean 
year. But, as I look back upon it now, my tak- 
ing up with that work for the Pressing Estab- 
lishment was my start toward what I might call 
success. Did I earn a great deal at it? No, I 
cannot say that. I did earn what seemed to me 
a considerable sum, but that wasn't the most 
important thing about this new phase in my 
economic situation. 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 65 

Tribulations of a Freshman 

Before I tell you what I consider to have been 
the advantages which this new field offered me, 
I might say a word about the difficulties that 
confront the freshman particularly. Of course, 
you know that in college life he is the under dog. 
He is, in the first place, the cat in the strange 
garret; he doesn't know his way around. In 
the second place, he is made to feel that he has 
no rights in comparison with a sophomore, to say 
nothing of an upper classman. Now, there are, 
of course, a great many men who apply to the 
Self-Help Bureau in a year, the average here 
being somewhere between one hundred and 
twenty-five and two hundred. Many of these 
men are sophomores and upper classmen. For 
the most part they have picked up what we call 
the "gravy" jobs. Many of the men are will- 
ing to work, but are unwilling to accept any- 
thing that would seem ungenteel. They would 
refuse a chance to wash windows or to mow 
a lawn. Now, it is these ungenteel jobs, and 
even relatively few of these, that can at first be 



66 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

given to the freshmen. The bureau, of course, 
tries to do its best for all the men, but it does not 
have jobs enough to go around. As yet it had 
been able to give me no steady employment, un- 
less you could consider the work I did on the good 
professor's furnace as such, and from the way I 
did that I was living in daily terror of losing it. 
Of course, I also had my work at the commons, 
which relieved me of part of my board bill. 

A Fool's Paradise 

Among other difficulties that the freshman 
has to contend with is the fact that he can never 
believe what is told him by a sophomore, because, 
of course, nothing delights a sophomore so much 
as to put one over on his unsuspecting victim. 
So the poor freshman's life, in Webster's phrase, 
is a "general mist of error." Everything, even 
a job, comes to him in a questionable shape. He 
is always wondering what is going to happen to 
him next, and college customs are deep and un- 
fathomable mysteries. I will give you an in- 
stance. 

Horsing season was about over, and I had an 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 67 

impression that conditions would improve and 
that the sophomores were now going to make it 
up to us. You know, of course, that some time 
early in the session the freshman class is sup- 
posed to have its picture taken, and that the 
sophomores consider it one of their most serious 
class responsibilities to "gum" that picture, and 
they do usually gum it for fair by throwing 
bags of wet farina, flour paste, or any other 
convenient sticky stuff on the posing freshies. 
As yet I wasn't Johnny Wise to all this, so when 
I was tipped off that the "flour picture" was 
to be taken I said: "I'll be there with bells!" I 
had a notion that the class would all stand up 
together and that we would be pelted with flowers 
by the reconciled sophomores. Visions of pink 
carnations flitted through my mind. I went back 
to my room, dressed in my best, with a fine new 
collar and dapper little bow tie, and started for 
the steps of Whig Hall. I was a little bit proud 
of myself and wanted a prominent place in that 
picture. The friendly sophomores were crowding 
around, but by the time the camera man was 
ready I discovered that instead of carnations the 



68 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

flour for the picture was Washburn & Crosby's, 
and it didn't jibe well with my blue suit. No, 
sirree! Those sophs didn't pin any roses on us! 
If I had known, I would, of course, have gone in 
my black jersey and corduroys and saved myself 
a day's work in cleaning my Sunday suit. As 
a freshman I was living continually in a fool's 
paradise. 

You will remember that I was working at 
commons. At dinner I was supposed to put in 
thirty minutes dishing out desserts. On Sun- 
days it was ice-cream. Another fellow was as- 
sociated with me; he was supposed to do what I 
did. He happened to be a sophomore, but, in- 
stead of working with me, he worked me. I had 
been told to do whatever a sophomore told me, 
because if I got one down on me the whole class 
would get after me, so I had decided to show this 
sophomore respect even if I didn't feel it. He 
used to throw biscuits at the waiter's head and 
then look innocent while the waiter with the tray 
on his hand looked daggers at me. We were 
supposed to dish out a twenty-five-gallon can of 
ice-cream apiece. He used to stand and watch 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 69 

me do my work, and when I had finished would 
order me to do his. For a while I did. But one 
Sunday afternoon the cup overflowed, and I re- 
belled. Going up to him, I said: 

"Say, are you running this place or are you 
supposed to work here the same as I?" — and I 
rolled up my sleeves for "work." He thought 
I was rather fresh, and told me so; but he did his 
own work that week and, so far as I was con- 
cerned, every week thereafter. 

Now, I am free to say that this sophomore was 
not typical, but I have no doubt that as long as 
there are freshmen and sophomores some fresh- 
men will do more work than they are paid for — 
and some sophomores less. 

An Undergraduate Business Man 

The service that the Self-Help Bureau renders 
lies in the fact that it can take account of the 
various qualifications of the new applicants and 
then give them a start. When a man has special 
qualifications, when he knows a particular trade, 
is an acceptable stenographer, for instance, it 
is fairly easy to get him started in his line of 



70 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

work. I was unfortunate in the fact that I had 
no trade. When, finally, I had found a place in 
the Pressing Establishment, I was started along 
a particular line. I was forced by necessity to 
become what you might call an undergraduate 
business man, and the first step necessary to 
success was to know the world that I had to 
deal with. I also learned there what qualities 
I had to possess. In the first place, there is one 
thing the student is famous for — it is his unre- 
liability. I made up my mind that here I would 
have to be the exception, and I pride myself 
that I have tried to keep my engagements, as 
any man in business would do. 

The second point was of equal importance. 
In my new work I came to know the student 
well, and, of course, you know his world is not 
the world outside or the world that I was used 
to. All men in college have certain points in 
common, but they differ as much among them- 
selves as do men in the world, and I learned to 
know their differences. My work carried me into 
the rooms of a very large number of students. I 
saw them all, and learned to know them as they 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 71 

are and not as they pretend to be. There are 
these two phases to every student's personality, 
as there are to every other man's. I learned to 
know the soul "he faces the world with" as well 
as that smaller, and sometimes finer, soul which 
is his in private. I went into the various rooms 
at any and all hours of the day and saw the men 
in their undress personalities. I watched them at 
their games; and I could tell the character of a 
fellow by the way he showed himself in his play — 
how he bore himself as a loser and as a winner. 
I could also tell something about the way in 
which he had to be approached from the kind of 
room he lived in and by the kind of company he 
kept. 

In my freshman year, through my new work, I 
therefore learned to know about four-fifths of 
the men in college, I likewise knew the location 
of every room on the campus, and picked up a 
pretty large store of miscellaneous information; 
for the man from the Pressing Establishment is 
like the player in Shakespeare — he has his exits 
and his entrances. 



72 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

Between Two Fires 

But you must not imagine that after this 
one job I was rolling in wealth or that I was to 
have a joy-ride through the rest of my freshman 
year. That was not to come until a few years 
later. Yes, I'm taking that now. 

In the period from September to Christmas, 
for all my efforts, the work that I had found had 
netted me exactly thirty dollars and thirty-three 
cents. The remainder of the little sum which I 
had received from home had melted away like 
snow in the sun. I find that for the year, in- 
cluding tuition and all charges, my average ex- 
penses were about ten dollars and fifty cents a 
week. I was deeply in debt, and even with the 
best I could do I was falling farther behind. 
Furthermore, my first examinations were coming 
along and I knew that I must pass them. In the 
free time that I had had before Christmas, you 
will remember that I had studied and passed off 
entrance conditions, but I was far from being 
up with my regular studies; so I was in that con- 
tinual dilemma of which I spoke — I did not dare 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 73 

neglect my studies for fear of the faculty, and I 
did not dare neglect my work for fear of the 
treasurer. Somehow, it was one long fight with 
and against myself to stay in. While I was do- 
ing my work I worried about my lessons, and 
while I was studying I worried about money. 
Of the two, however, it was the money question 
that worried me most. This was so because I 
knew that if I had the time I could get up my 
studies, but with all the time in the world, with- 
out a job, I could not earn the money I abso- 
lutely had to have, for there was a limit to what 
I could do in the Pressing Establishment. 

But somehow the days passed and we ran 
into the feverish week of mid-year examinations. 
I managed to pass them, but had nothing to 
spare. 

The Black Hand 

With the beginning of the second term troubles 
came back, if I can be said to have forgotten 
them at all. There was still a heavy balance 
due on my first term's bill from the treasurer, 
but I had moved to the campus and was begin- 



74 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

ning to feel comfortable. One day when I came 
back after my rounds I found waiting for me 
the treasurer's second-term bill. Those bills are 
made out for the entire term's expenses.* It was 
like a letter from the Black Hand. It simply 
knocked the spots out of me. It called for about 
one hundred and thirty-seven dollars. This in 

* Note. — I have the permission of the student who is here telling 
his story to print the record of his freshman expenses as taken from 
his diary. This record is particularly interesting when compared with 
the minimum statement of expenses as estimated in the university 
catalogue. That statement, which excludes certain laboratory fees, 
apparatus deposits, books, hall dues, clothes, room furnishings, 
incidentals, travelling and vacation expenses, calls for $384. This 
student's statement includes absolutely every item of expense from 
the time of his entrance in September until August of the following 
year. It should be remembered that he received a reduction on his 
tuition and board, but his statement given below includes every 
item that he actually paid out in that period: 

Tuition, room-rent, and board $191 .00 

Text-books 14-39 

Laundry (sent most of it home) 2 . 79 

Clothing (including shoes, haberdashery, etc.) 14. 20 

Car-fare .40 

Candy, etc .90 

Spreads and lunches 3-85 

Postals and stamps 3 . 40 

Athletic dues and goods (including basket-ball shoes, basket- 
ball suit, etc.) 10 . 85 

Amusements 5 . 06 

Medical expenses 4. 15 

Travelling expenses 21 . 88 

Furniture 20 . 93 

Sundries 27 . 10 

Total $320.90 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 75 

addition to what I already owed! — and not 
counting incidentals. It gave me a queer feel- 
ing; you know it, the feeling you have when your 
Adam's apple is beginning to choke you. 

I sat and looked at the wall. It offered no con- 
solation. I started to do a little bookkeeping — 
all told, I owed in Princeton about two hundred 
dollars; and incidentals for the next four months 
would amount to at least thirty or forty dollars 
more. To stay in college and break even I would 
have to earn two hundred and thirty dollars. I 
felt at that time that twenty-five cents an hour 
was good pay. At this rate, in the next eighteen 
weeks I would have to put in nine hundred and 
twenty hours' work. That meant fifty-one hours 
a week, or pretty nearly nine hours a day — ex- 
cluding studies. Do you wonder at my seeing 
red ? I didn't like the prospect ! 

That statement which the principal had made 
when I left for Princeton again came back to me: 
"I'll give you six months as an outside limit." 

I began to wonder whether he hadn't been too 
liberal and whether I hadn't stayed too long. 
When a fellow's in the dumps that way he prac- 



76 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

tically loses what little nerve he has — he's bull- 
dozed by what he is up against. All I could do 
was to stare at that balance and wonder what I'd 
do with it. I couldn't wish it off; I couldn't go 
away and leave it — the debt would follow me. 
Well, I felt there was no place to go but out — 
so I went. I wanted action. It got so black 
before my eyes I couldn't see a thing. I went 
down to the gym and played basket-ball for three 
and a half hours, until I was absolutely exhausted 
physically; then I went home and fell into bed; 
and I got up in the morning feeling fine. 

When in trouble, go to the gym. That was 
my rule. You always feel better in the morning, 
anyway. I suppose the bill was still just as 
large, but I didn't think about it. 

But that feeling of being up against an im- 
possible proposition was with me off and on for 
nearly all the rest of the year. It finally wore off. 
I wore it off because it was simply impossible to 
go on that way, and whenever it seemed to be 
getting the better of me I'd go down to the gym 
and sweat it out. But gradually, while I was car- 
rying the clothes to and from the shop, I noticed 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 77 

that the spring was catching up with me, and 
you know when a fine day comes and you look 
at the fellows and everybody's happy, you for- 
get everything. Well, so did I. 

Daylight at Last 

Besides my work at the Pressing Establishment, 
when the baseball season opened I sold pro- 
grammes at the games, and gradually I cut down 
that big balance at the treasurer's. It was still 
uncomfortably large, but we were jogging along 
toward summer, and what's the treasurer's bill 
compared with a fine spring day, with a lot of 
the fellows around, and everybody smiling and 
happy ! The campus was beginning to be beau- 
tiful; the grass was green and the leaves were 
out. One evening when I came back from the 
commons I heard the seniors singing on the steps 
of Nassau Hall. It looked to me as if I were 
going to see the finish of that year, after all. 

I had heard rumors to the effect that the uni- 
versity was going to start a farm and give em- 
ployment to some of the students during the 
summer. The university owned a large tract of 



78 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

land south of the campus, and, instead of allowing 
it to lie idle, decided to turn it over to students 
who wished to farm it. One fine Saturday morn- 
ing I made one of my usual visits to the secretary 
of the Self-Help Bureau. He told me that I had 
better talk fast, as he had to see the president in 
five minutes. 

"Two minutes is all I want," I said. I was 
out of that office in a minute and a half, and in 
the meantime had secured a ticket for the Ford- 
ham baseball game and the promise of a job dur- 
ing the summer on the Princeton Farm at two 
dollars a day. Needless to say, I enjoyed that 
Fordham game ! 

That promise of a job in the summer put a 
new light on things, for with what I could earn 
before commencement and during the summer I 
saw that I could enter in the fall with a clean 
slate for sophomore year. The exams came on, 
but they had lost most of their terrors — or else 
I had lost my respect for them; in any case I 
passed them; and after the last exam, with the 
rest of the freshmen, I threw my black cap — that 
emblem of the freshman's infamy — out of the 



DEVIL AND DEEP SEA 79 

window and ran out and trampled on the grass 
to show that I was now a full-fledged sophomore 
and enjoyed all the privileges of a college student. 
I had stuck out my year and was feeling fine. I 
went over to the Univee Store, bought that picture 
postal of a tiger, the Princeton pennant, and the 
college cheer. Under it I wrote, in a large, bold 
hand: 

"Greetings from Princeton," 

signed my name, and sent it to that principal 
who had given me six months as an outside limit. 
He had nothing on me. 



CHAPTER V 
THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 

Well, I was a sophomore. Did I swagger? 
Sure. Everybody does, some. You get that feel- 
ing in June for a day or two at least. You can't 
help it. A good many of the men who had en- 
tered with me had flunked out; in any case, I 
had heard a great deal about them, for the man 
who flunks out gets an exaggerated amount of 
attention. It reacts on the feeling of pride of 
those who have the good luck to stay in, and, of 
course, I had some of it — that is, both of the 
luck and pride. 

As a matter of fact, I was so pleased that for 

the time being I forgot all about my financial 

embarrassment. The thought I had was to get 

away from books and just have a lot of fun 

and a lot of physical exercise. Every summer I 

made this a rule, and it was a good one. Ordi- 

80 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 81 

narily, I didn't crack a book — for study. Yes, I 
did, of course, read for pleasure. 

But the academic year was not yet entirely 
over. The campus was in holiday, and the grave 
seniors — they didn't look so very grave to me — 
possessed the place. I had heard that they had 
fine times at commencement. My last examina- 
tion fell on the Friday before the Yale game, and 
the alumni were beginning to come in in costumes. 
It certainly did look to me as if they were going 
to have a good time for sure, and if there was 
going to be any fun I wanted to see it. Fun is 
cheap around college, and it's the one thing I 
always felt I couldn't afford to miss. But as yet 
I hadn't had any of what we call Princeton spirit, 
and when I saw all the men in costumes parad- 
ing through the town I got pretty much the same 
impression that I would have had from seeing a 
circus go through and pull off its stunts. 

But in the evening, out in front of Nassau Hall, 
it was different. I had dressed for a holiday, had 
dinner at commons, which was now quiet and half- 
deserted, and I was rested. My cares were gone, 
and I felt free and at large in the world for the 



82 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

first time in many months, and as I sauntered 
over to the campus on that summer evening, in 
my best suit, I thought as I looked back that I 
was pretty lucky. I just sat there for a couple 
of hours and listened. The songs of the older 
classes appealed to me particularly. To hear 
some old grad, forty-five or fifty, who was prob- 
ably the leader of the glee-club in his day, get up 
and sing with what little voice he had left, but 
with all his pep — somehow it makes a fellow feel 
queer. I began to think there was something in 
it, after all, and when they walked around the 
front campus in the soft light of the Japanese 
lanterns I began to have a more sober feeling 
about Princeton and being a Princeton man. I 
began to think that that's what I was. 

Staying over for that commencement helped 
to tie me to the place. Early in the next week I 
went home. I might add that I hadn't wasted 
my time, and that I had sold programmes at the 
commencement game. 

How did it feel to be home again, and how 
did they treat me? They had gotten into the 
habit of treating me, on my return, as if I were 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 83 

the prodigal son, and as I never saw much sense 
in that I now came back unannounced. 

Was there anything special about this return? 
No, the greatest fuss that was ever made over 
me was at Thanksgiving time of my freshman 
year. Why? Because we had won the football 
championship. Everybody treated me as if I 
were a member of the team. I liked it. You 
haven't any idea what a difference a successful 
football season makes in the reception a fellow 
like myself gets when he goes home. The fact 
that I had passed all my studies and done a year's 
work was nothing compared to the fact that a 
lot of other fellows whom I didn't even know, 
and who didn't belong to my class, had won foot- 
ball games from Yale and Harvard. But there's 
no use trying to be philosophical about this; I 
enjoyed that reception they gave me at Thanks- 
giving time, and hope that next year's freshmen 
will be able to go back for Thanksgiving under 
the same conditions. I suppose it is generally 
true all the way around that parents make less 
and less fuss about the return of college prodigals 
the longer they are away at college. They come, 



84 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

just as my people did, to take it for granted. 
I was away at college, and now when I came 
back the folks accepted without comment the 
fact that I was home and that I would return to 
Princeton again. 

Student Farmers 

In this case I was only home for a few days, 
because, as you will remember, I had made my 
plans in that interview with the secretary of the 
Self-Help Bureau when he gave me a place for 
the summer. I was to work on the University 
Farm. I may have ability, but I'm sure that I 
had very little experience as a farmer. My whole 
previous training consisted in one day's work, 
which I had put in when I was about ten, pick- 
ing beans and tomatoes. For that day's work I 
had earned about twenty cents; but I learned 
where to go for "free" tomatoes when we later 
went swimming. On the strength of that you 
couldn't really call me a finished agriculturist. 
But I don't want you to imagine that that farm 
proposition was a dead loss to the university. 
I know some people smile when you talk about 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 85 

"The Farm." I want to say right here that to 
the best of my knowledge and belief (and I ought 
to know something about it, as I later kept the 
books) that farm in the first year broke even 
financially and was later making money. It 
acquired a good deal of valuable machinery and 
had several hundred dollars' worth of cover 
crops planted for the following year when it 
came to an end. Furthermore, the agricultural 
side of it was excellently managed, and if the 
farm "petered out" it was not because the scheme 
was a failure but because the stadium was built 
in the heart of it and most of the rest of it was 
needed for the approaches and other develop- 
ments about the stadium. So, if anybody wants 
to laugh about chimerical schemes, he'll have to 
find something else to laugh about besides this 
project of student farming. 

There were, to be sure, a number of things 
about the farm in the first year that were amus- 
ing. In the first place, a farmer is supposed to 
get up at four and work till moonrise. We 
didn't. We worked eight hours a day at twenty- 
five cents per hour, then played tennis and took 



86 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

a shower. I call that office work and banking 
hours. Furthermore, things were not yet under 
way, and work not only had to be done but had 
to be manufactured; that is, the boss had to sit 
up nights to think out things for us to do. You 
couldn't work any more than eight hours if you 
wanted to. In other words, you were limited to 
forty-eight hours a week. You could, however 
(at least one of my friends and myself did), work 
twelve hours a day for four days and earn a three 
days' vacation. My friend felt it was a shame 
to take the money, and decided he would relieve 
the university of one man's time and take a job 
in New York; so we decided we'd make the trip 
to the great city in a canoe on one of our three 
days' recesses. 

Down to the Sea in Ships 

It was one of the adventures of the summer 
that I remember with a good deal of pleasure 
— as I look back on it. We started off Friday 
afternoon and slept that night somewhere near 
New Brunswick, under the canoe, "On the Banks 
of the Old Raritan." So far, so good. Our 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 87 

troubles came the next day. And, I'll tell you, 
farmers have no right to go down to the sea in 
ships. 

There was evidently going to be a storm, but 
we didn't know it. Just before we got down to 
Newark Bay we began to attract some attention 
in our seventy-five-pound craft, and drew up 
alongside a barge for water. We figured that to 
reach our destination we still had to go through 
Newark Bay, Kill von Kull, and then across five 
miles of the open water of upper New York Bay 
to get to Gowanus Canal. While we were getting 
our drink the old salt on the barge looked us over 
and said: 

"Where be ye goin', mates?" 

"Gowanus Canal," we answered innocently. 

"In that sloop?" he said. 

"Yes." 

He looked us over again from head to foot, 
looked at our canoe, looked at the sky, turned 
his back, and walked into his cabin scratching 
his head but never saying a word. We realized 
later that his silence was more eloquent than 
speech could have been, for when we arrived in 



V 



88 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

New York Bay the waves were so high that as 
we tumbled into the troughs I could barely see 
the upper decks of the large Staten Island ferry- 
boats that were crossing in front of us. 

The fact that I am telling you this story proves 
that we got there — but I don't know how, and 
we didn't deserve to. My friend stayed in New 
York and I came back by train to my more pro- 
saic labors. 

Tilling the soil may not be exciting, but we 
had a glorious time. I don't mean financially, 
but socially, because, even though we did get 
our rooms, we had to pay board, and there was 
not a great deal left on Saturday night. I did, 
however, manage to do pretty well, for I got a 
few incidental jobs, one of them carrying mail, 
and I came back to college in mighty fine shape 
and with a determination to make a second group. 

All told, things looked pretty favorable now. 
During the summer I had met a man who prom- 
ised me that I could get work enough at the com- 
mons to pay all my board. This would relieve 
me of five dollars and fifty cents a week, and I 
began to imagine that being a sophomore would 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 89 

be one long dream. It wasn't. It was a night- 
mare. When things are coming your way you 
can't stop them, but when they are going against 
you, you can't stop them either, and in my sopho- 
more year, at the beginning especially, they cer- 
tainly went against me hard. 

Back on the Campus 

The summer's work was done and I was on 
the campus once more. A new crop of freshmen 
were here, and the everlasting round was begin- 
ning again. I am not ashamed to say that I 
was feeling my sophomoric oats, and I hazed 
one presumptuous-looking freshman just to get 
an objective view of how foolish I must have 
looked when they did it to me. But, honestly, I 
had very little stomach for it, and I think a good 
deal of it is nonsense and some of it vicious — and 
for this reason: as a general thing they horse the 
men who need it least and they let of! the bump- 
tious freshman who comes from a big, well-known 
prep school, or the promising athlete who has 
friends to get him out of it; whereas, when a fel- 
low comes, in all humility, from some little corner 



9 o COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

and feels low in his mind, and makes absolutely 
no pretensions, he ordinarily is the man who gets 
it worst; and he has no friends to call off the 
terrorizing sophs. And what little courage he 
has is knocked out of him for months — and 
sometimes years. 

But, on the whole, even though I tried to 
down it, I felt that I had a pretty large claim on 
the world and a pretty tight mortgage on the 
sophomore year. But things began to break 
pretty badly. 

The Last Straw 

You will remember that I had a debt of one 
hundred and fifty dollars to pay for money 
borrowed. I had gotten this off by incurring 
other debts, but it left me far down in the 
world, and, financially speaking, my head was 
under water. Still, the commons had started 
and I was to be able to earn my board. I 
went up to see about my prospective work 
and found that this was a mistake, or that 
in any case the promise which had been made 
me by a student, whom I had believed to be in 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 91 

authority, could not be kept. I could work off 
only part of my commons bill, and would have 
to pay three dollars a week ! That meant for the 
year an expense of one hundred and eight dol- 
lars which I had not counted upon. In addition, 
as you have seen, I was already in debt. It meant, 
all told, an initial deficit of about two hundred 
and fifty dollars. There was worse to come. 
You will remember that my job with the Press- 
ing Establishment had been my consolation in 
the dark days of freshman year. This now was 
lost to me. I learned that this was only a job for 
freshmen, and I couldn't have it. I shall have 
more to say about this later, and about the com- 
plicated machinery of undergraduate business, 
but for the present it is sufficient to know that 
my job was gone. 

There were even worse breakers ahead. In 
my freshman year I had been granted a remission 
of one hundred dollars on my tuition, for I had 
entered on conditions and had passed them off. 
Now, our marking system divides the students 
who pass into five groups. Group 1 is, of course, 
the highest, but groups 2 and 3 are still considered 



92 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

as belonging to the good-student class. To get 
remission as a sophomore I had to have a grade 
of at least 3.20. I had finished freshman year 
with an average .02 of a point below this (3.22) 
and had foolishly believed that this would be 
sufficient. College had been open about a week 
and as yet I had no job. I thought I might as 
well have this matter of my tuition settled, and 
to do so I had to see one of the university author- 
ities. This official, as I have learned to know him 
since, is a splendid man personally. He has a 
heart as big as his head, but it seemed to me 
then that he did not understand the psychology 
of men like myself. At least on that occasion I 
failed to make him understand me. I had just 
been told about my fiasco at the commons. I 
was not cheerful, and I never have been any good 
at smoothness. 

My story certainly was a hard-luck tale, and 
on the face of it it looked fishy. I don't blame 
him now for having been suspicious. I shot him 
a perfectly straight story, but one that would 
have made the Count of Monte Cristo look like 
thirty cents. He looked at me as if I were giv- 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 93 

ing him panhandling dope. Excuse the phrase, 
but that's exactly what I mean. I spoke to him 
about remission and explained to him the situa- 
tion. He said, and he was perfectly right as I 
see it now, that he had to draw the line some- 
where, and I was .02 of a point below the line. 
That seemed to me a hard margin to lose on. 

He could not give me remission then, but, by 
way of consolation, told me that in case I made a 
third group the first term he would grant me the 
remission for the year, but for the present could 
do nothing. I was in present trouble and this 
thin prospect of future consolation did not con- 
sole. I likewise brought up the matter of my 
unfortunate status at commons. He had the 
power to help me out. I wasn't brought up in a 
parlor and I'm afraid my manner lacked finish. 
In any case, I didn't impress, I only depressed 
him. Now, a poor man is proud not of the fact 
that he hasn't anything, but because he hasn't. 
My pride was all that I had left, and when you're 
in that state it is very easily hurt. I didn't want 
anything that didn't belong to me, I wasn't 
clamoring for my pound of flesh, but he was busy 



94 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

and broke in on my story, saying that a man who 
can't pay three dollars a week for board doesn't 
belong in college, and concluded with: "This 
isn't a charitable institution." That was the last 
straw, and it was the hardest knock. It was the 
one thing that made me bitter. 

I understand it now, and you must know that 
I hold nothing against him, and he, who has many 
such cases to decide, probably never thought about 
it again. But absolutely and without exception 
that was the blackest moment in my college ca- 
reer. The idea that people could imagine that I 
was looking for charity knocked my legs out from 
under me. I cut my classes for three or four 
days straight, brooded about the whole business, 
and decided that I was through with this place. 
I walked over to the Self-Help Bureau and asked 
the secretary what job he could get for a man 
outside. 

It so happened that at just this time he had 
been asked to provide a man as companion to 
an invalid who was going to Florida. That 
sounded good to me, partly because it was far 
away, and I made up my mind I would take that 



THE GAY YOUNG SOPHOMORE 95 

job. The secretary was to give me the details 
that afternoon. 

I packed my grip and returned a few hours 
later prepared to go to Florida, but for once in 
my life luck was with me — the job was gone. 



CHAPTER VI 
ON THE DEFENSIVE 

I say that I lost that Florida job, and was 
sorry. I really didn't know what to do next. I 
went out and walked my legs off. It's always a 
relief to get dead tired, and the next morning 
when I awoke I made up my mind that I'd stay 
here out of spite; I'd run up a bill, and if I couldn't 
pay it they'd have to throw me out. It was the 
only time that I ever felt this way in my life. 
All told, it was the darkest hour in my four 
years. Well, one thing helped; I now had some 
friends, and when I say friend I mean a fellow 
who will stick. 

After a few days I'd pulled myself out of the 
dumps. I knew I had lost the pressing work, 
and I had to find something to do. You will 
remember I had been on the farm during the 
summer, and during the fall there was a certain 

amount of bookkeeping and an occasional day's 

9 6 



ON THE DEFENSIVE 97 

work at gathering crops. But so far this was all 
that was in sight. I saw that I had to start out 
on my own responsibility, and, instead of going 
to hunt up the work that was lying around loose, 
I decided, now that I knew more about college 
life and customs, to go out and manufacture the 
work. My first scheme in this line (and it was 
to be the first of many) I entered upon with 
another fellow, and it proved a failure. It was 
a scheme for selling to the freshmen black caps 
and jerseys. There was nothing wrong with the 
scheme intrinsically except that by the time we 
really got started all the freshmen had their caps 
and jerseys. For a week's hard work we cashed 
in three dollars and fifty cents apiece and the 
scheme was dead. 

Off to a Poor Start 

I didn't really relish the idea of being advised 
to leave for non-payment of bills. That was only 
a momentary back-fire, and I made up my mind 
I was going to start in and get off this load that 
was hanging over me. Henry James says that 
the hero of Balzac's "Human Comedy" is the 



98 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

twenty-franc piece. Now, the hero of my sopho- 
more year was the dollar bill, and for the first 
part of the year especially my story revolves 
around the money question. You can see why. 
If in addition to the two hundred and fifty dol- 
lars, of which I have already spoken, I failed to 
get remission of tuition, it would add another one 
hundred dollars to my year's expenses at the 
start, to say nothing of room-rent, heat and light, 
and the other items which would be included in 
the term bill which was now due. I had to try 
to move that mountain, and I went after it. 

Among other things that I took up was the 
delivering of papers, an hour in the morning and 
an hour in the evening. I likewise decided to 
cash in some of my previous year's experience and 
therefore went out scouting to find more furnaces 
to conquer. All told, I found four of them — that 
the owners were willing to intrust to me — and 
this year I dare say I did better. Nothing suc- 
ceeds like failure, and I had certainly been a 
pretty good failure in my early weeks at that other 
furnace. In addition to these furnaces I found 
employment in an artist's studio. No, you're 



ON THE DEFENSIVE 99 

joking, I wasn't a model. My face wouldn't let 
me do that; no such soft stuff was ever to come 
my way — I had to work for mine, but it was 
easy work. I was only handy boy around the 
studio — or tried to be — cleaned pictures, washed 
brushes, mowed the lawn in the early fall and 
spring, shined shoes, and did general janitor work. 
Did I mind ? No. The artist was a splendid fel- 
low, and made it £s easy for me as he could. All 
this helped to make a start. 

The Students' Distributing Agency 

Necessity is the mother of invention, and I was 
under the necessity of getting my bills paid and 
proving that I was not a charity patient, so I 
decided I would have to invent — promote, I sup- 
pose you'd say — and I soon became interested 
in two schemes, the first of which started on the 
suggestion of one of my very good friends who 
was to be my partner in this work for the rest of 
my college course. The scheme had originated 
something like this: We had noticed that monthly 
statements from the university store were deliv- 
ered at the students' rooms by students. Evi- 



ioo COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

dently this saved postage. Why couldn't the 
business men in town have their monthly student 
bills delivered in the same way ? Instead of pay- 
ing two cents for postage, they would pay us one 
cent a bill and save one cent. If we could get 
them to do this it would be to their advantage as 
well as to ours. The whole thing lay in getting 
it started right and in having some reliable mer- 
chant or business man give us his confidence. 

This was no easy matter, but after a number 
of interviews, with the help of the secretary of 
the bureau, the man we wanted decided to give 
us a try. 

The rest was easy, and we soon had started 
The Students' Distributing Agency, and distrib- 
uted on the college grounds and to the students 
in town, at the seminary, and to the graduate stu- 
dents the monthly statements of two laundries, 
two restaurants, three drug-stores and soda-foun- 
tains, one furnishing house, and a telegraph office. 
In addition we took over a certain amount of 
what would now be called parcel-post business, 
which we later lost to the government. No, I 
bear no grudges. They do it about as well as 



ON THE DEFENSIVE 101 

we did. The only difference is that we didn't 
lose money or get into a fuss with the railroads. 

Evidently we had struck something good and 
we started to develop and expand the business. 
If we distributed statements, why not distribute 
circulars also and branch out into advertising? 
We decided it would be a good plan to persuade 
various establishments in and out of town to get 
their names prominently before the students by 
giving them some little souvenir and having us 
distribute it. We suggested something useful, a 
blotter, for instance, with their name and compli- 
ments, and they took up with it. Soon we were 
distributing blotters from several merchants in 
town, from a New York hotel, two fountain- 
pen manufacturers, a shoe-house, a tailor, and a 
barber. We worked the scheme until the boys 
held up their hands when they saw us coming, 
and for a time I must confess it did certainly rain 
blotters. 

We saw we had reached the stage of diminish- 
ing returns; blotters were no longer welcome, and 
we began timidly to suggest celluloid rulers, in- 
expensive hat-cleaners, etc. In addition we dis- 



102 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

tributed booklets and advertising circulars and 
samples of one sort and another. In this way I 
got to know every short cut in the dormitories, 
and, after having systematized the work, found 
that I could make a complete delivery in about 
two and a half hours. It saved money for them 
and it brought money to us, and we have stayed 
with and developed that business up to the pres- 
ent, until I suppose now it has become a college 
custom. 

Now, there is one thing to be remembered 
about a new college enterprise. There is no pat- 
ent or exclusive franchise, and if you start some- 
thing of this sort that is new and begins to be 
good, and noise it around, a number of other fel- 
lows immediately go and do likewise and swamp 
your scheme. So we kept it dark until we had 
completely developed the system and were sure 
that an announcement of our advanced status 
and practical monopoly would bring us more 
business and tend to discourage imitation. 



ON THE DEFENSIVE 103 

"You've Got to Hop Some" 

But the Distributing Agency did not spring up 
in a single night; it was the work of many months, 
and as yet was in its infancy. In the meantime 
the Yale game was coming along, and, as the last 
year's circulation manager for the programmes 
had been graduated, I decided to apply for his 
place. I got it, and it was to lead to better 
things later on. 

But don't imagine that I was living on Easy 
Street. It's a hard little world and you've got to 
hop some to beat the other fellow to it. Every 
once in so often a notice would come from the 
treasurer, and I had made up my mind I was 
going to cut down that bill. 

You will remember that we had lost out on the 
scheme for selling freshmen caps and jerseys be- 
cause some one else had been too quick for us. 
I decided to go in on another scheme and to get 
in earlier, and on the ground floor. It was after 
Christmas, and, as you know, the freshman is not 
allowed to wear a yellow slicker. He wears the 
black rubber coat. But I thought it wo^d be a 



io 4 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

good time to begin to take orders for the next 
September, when they would be sophomores; and 
of course every sophomore wears a yellow slicker 
just because he couldn't wear one as a freshman. 
It's the badge of all his tribe. There is a good 
profit to be made on slickers if you can buy them 
wholesale. We decided to get a somewhat better 
slicker than usual and sell it for a little less, and 
started around to take orders. 

Now, ordinarily you can't find men in their 
rooms before 8.30 p. m. Dinner and the movies, 
about the only form of amusement off the cam- 
pus, keep them until that time. Yes, the moving- 
picture show is now a recognized part of every 
student's education. We went at our work 
every night from 8.30 until 10.30 or n. The 
whole scheme depended upon how we handled 
the freshmen. They follow each other like sheep, 
and if you can get one in a crowd you can get 
them all. We worked hard on this scheme, and 
the next fall when the slickers were delivered we 
had cleared one hundred dollars. 

Yes, it was a good deal of work, and it kept 
me pretty busy, and there is only one other oc- 



ON THE DEFENSIVE 105 

cupation that I need mention for the present. 
In the spring and fall I ran the traps for the gun 
club, and of course in the spring I again took 
charge of the distribution of the programmes at 
the games. 

This was by far the hardest work that I have 
done during my college career. But things were 
humming, and I like to hear them hum, so I 
wasn't gloomy. I didn't have time for that. 
The work was interesting and not monotonous, 
and I got a lot of fun out of it, laughing with the 
crowd, or at them, or having them laugh at me. 

A Typical Day 

How did I manage to crowd it all into one 
day? There wasn't any crowding; I was forced 
to reduce it to a system, and everything fitted in 
nicely. Yes, I can give you specimen days from 
my diary. Through the winter I got up at about 
5, studied, and went out to take care of the 
furnaces — at one place, you will remember, I 
shined shoes and carried the coal, etc.; returned 
home at 7 or 7.05, took a shower and changed 
clothes, and was at the commons for breakfast 



106 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

at 7.30, for I still worked at the commons; took 
charge of the stand for about an hour a day. 
Went to three classes in the morning; had lunch; 
in the afternoon put in two hours at the studio; 
would ride down on my wheel to the farm and 
take charge of the books for an hour and a half 
or two hours; came back for dinner; fixed up the 
furnaces for the night, which took about an hour; 
went home and studied a bit; and when there was 
distributing to do, did that, and when there was 
no distributing, went out canvassing for slickers. 
I got home between 10 and n, studied for a 
while, and was up again between 4 and 5.30, ac- 
cording to the number of classes I had to prepare 
for that day. I did most of my studying in the 
early morning, while I was feeling fresh and when 
my time was uninterrupted. I think some wise 
old boy has said: "Six hours' sleep for a man, 
seven for a woman, eight for a fool." I got a 
man's sleep in those days, though now I take the 
eight — but then you know I'm a senior. 

Did I find it hard to get recreation ? No, not 
at all. It's a curious fact, but it's true, that the 
busier I was, and the more I had to do, the more 



ON THE DEFENSIVE 107 

time I seemed to get for things outside and the 
more I enjoyed them. Some of the keenest mo- 
ments of enjoyment that I ever remember having 
had were the little intervals of rest between two 
jobs when I came back to my room. Situated as 
it was, it was a kind of meeting-place, and after 
sitting and fooling with my classmates for a 
quarter of an hour or so I went off again feeling 
mighty cheerful. 

In that schedule I am not counting the times 
I found to go down to the gym — and I did go 
down fairly often, except in the spring, when I 
played baseball — lectures, recitals, concerts, and 
the time I spent talking with the fellows in my 
room or in theirs, and now and then playing a 
game of chess. I'm glad to say, however, that I 
didn't have to work at that pace my next two 
years. 

When did I get my fob ? Oh, I'm very proud 
of that. It was given me for being a member of 
the championship baseball team of my class in 
that year. 



CHAPTER VII 
WITH COMPLIMENTS TO PADDY 

My year's work looks more discouraging to you 
than it did to me. You must set it up against 
my previous experiences; and I see I must give 
you my points of comparison, and especially one 
comparison which I made very frequently to 
myself and which gave me a good deal of com- 
fort. All I had to do to shake off the blues was 
to say to myself: "Remember 339." I thought 
I'd explained that? Well, it was like this. 

You remember that as a youngster I had 

usually kept in pretty good trim and got a fair 

amount of physical exercise. But while at high 

school, during term time, what I did was mostly 

in the way of collecting — light work, you might 

call it — so that as a result I was somewhat soft 

and out of training in the summer. When 

I was sixteen I was looking for steady work, 

and finally joined a gang with pick and shovel. 

108 



WITH COMPLIMENTS TO PADDY 109 

Like a convict, I lost my name and became a 
number. I was "339." I stood down in the ditch 
with a lot of dagos. Above stood a burly Irish- 
man with a black, half-eaten clay pipe in his face. 
He was so expert with that pipe that he could 
swear without removing or holding it. That was 
his business — I mean swearing at us. It was his 
idea of encouragement, and gave him a good deal 
of private satisfaction besides. As a matter of 
fact, his cussing didn't really do any harm, be- 
cause I was about the only man in the gang who 
understood his lingo. 

I always remembered my experiences, especially 
my first morning there, and it will serve as a 
"point of comparison." It was broiling hot and 
we were sizzling in the sun. My arms were sore 
and my back stiff as a board. I had worked for 
what seemed half a day and was pricking up my 
ears for the whistle. After digging for what 
seemed another long hour, I turned to the Italian 
next me and finally made him understand that I 
wanted to know what time it was. He leans his 
shovel against him, pulls up two shirts, pulls out 
a watch like a clock, and says: "Hava pasta 



no COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

nine!" I don't see how it ever struck twelve 
that day. I honestly thought it never would. 
That summer I stood in the ditch with a row of 
Italians, to whom I couldn't talk, bending over 
my pick and shovel "from morn to dewy eve, ,, 
though I confess I had no time to think whether 
the eve was "dewy" or not. 

More Work than Poetry 

By the way, while we're talking Milton, I re- 
member one of my preceptors was discussing the 
question of what is poetry with a group of us one 
day, and brought up the lines: 

"Now came still evening on, and twilight gray 
Had in her sober livery all things clad," 

and was asking us why this was good poetry. 
They say the masses don't appreciate poetry, and 
I like to think that I belong to the masses. Those 
lines are beautiful to me now, but they can be 
poetry only to the man who is free from care 
and has time to let his thoughts wander to things 
outside. It's nothing to feel highbrow about — 
any laborer has the same innate capacity — but 



WITH COMPLIMENTS TO PADDY in 

you can't expect the man who has worked with 
the hoe or with pick and shovel all day to appre- 
ciate lines like that. He is tired and hungry, 
wants to eat and sleep, and his thoughts are 
centred on his own bodily needs. Well, there 
was no poetry about that work of mine. I was 
earning my dollar and a half (toward the end, 
two dollars) for ten hours' work, and that's 
all there was to it. I carried my dinner, about 
eight sandwiches and a bottle of milk or two 
bottles of beer, and ate it on the edge of the 
ditch as Number 339 of the section gang. It 
was the same thing from morning to night; the 
only variety or possible change in "the day's 
occupation" came when the Irish boss had dis- 
covered a new cuss word. He spent his time 
between oaths in thinking up new ones, and, like 
most Irishmen, he was imaginative and fluent. 
He let me know that I was working for him and 
that I was his man, and, like most of his class, 
after he had been told by my brother that I was 
in the high school, he felt a dumb resentment at 
the fact of my having more " education" than the 
boss and rubbed it in on every occasion. I say 



ii2 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

there was no variety in my work as 339 of the 
wop gang. That's a slight misstatement. 

For a time some of us were detailed to unload 
one-hundred-pound sewer-pipes, and since now 
and then, when Paddy's oaths got monotonous, or 
he had discovered some really offensive phrase, I 
told him in language that he could understand 
to cut it out, he picked me for this job. I wasn't 
going to let him bluff me. He wanted the satis- 
faction of seeing me cave in, and I wasn't going 
to give it to him. We lock-stepped with those 
pipes on our shoulders, and I tell you mine were 
peeled and raw as a beefsteak from my neck to 
my arm. I carried them from the car to the 
ditch all day to an obligato of Irish oaths and 
"Hur-r-ry up, smairty; get a move on ye, ye 

," with now and then a choicer bar. As 

I was carrying those pipes I said to myself: "My 
boy, that's all you're fitted for or you wouldn't 
be here." So I made up my mind that I wasn't 
going to stay and left Paddy without much 
hand-shaking. 

Well, that's what life had been like, on oc- 
casions, before I came to college. The conditions 



WITH COMPLIMENTS TO PADDY 113 

under which I worked now made work seem 
play. Everybody had a smile or a cheerful word. 
None of the boys ever treated me with anything 
but respect because I earned my way, and all 
gave me help and encouragement. There was no 
distinction. The finest thing about it was the 
fact that there was no snobbish condescension. 
We were all on the same footing. I wasn't working 
for them; I was only one of them who worked. 

So, on days when hours seemed long or work 
ran harder than usual, I used to remind myself 
of that fluent Irishman and 339 and forget about 
it. Compared to my time with the gang, my 
hardest day in college was pretty much paradise. 

Yes, I would have broken even with the treas- 
urer, but in the course of the year certain obli- 
gations had fallen to my share; still, at the end 
of the session I owed him only a small amount, 
which I felt could be paid up before the opening 
of college in September. 

An Old Partner of Mine 

But before I dismiss this matter I want to say 
a word about my partner in the Agency, be- 



ii 4 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

cause he is one of the most interesting and finest 
types of college man, and he stands out pretty- 
well against my older acquaintance, Paddy. 
He is one of the most unselfish and altru- 
istic fellows it has ever been my good fortune 
to know; a hard worker, but he doesn't talk 
about his work — his work talks for him. He 
is a Phi Beta Kappa man, but he doesn't live 
in his books alone. For three years he has run 
the launch for the Varsity crews — out of college 
spirit; he is business manager of two of the most 
important undergraduate publications, just be- 
cause he doesn't want to loaf; he takes a leading 
part in every Red-Cross scheme in the college — 
out of humanity; he has been one of the main 
factors in the development of the Undergraduate 
Schools Committee, because he feels he ought to 
do something for Princeton in the country at 
large; he has prepared several of the important 
undergraduate handbooks and programmes, and 
for recreation he teaches a class of negroes on 
Sunday afternoons. Besides all this, he always 
has time for everybody and for everything new. 
Well, it was he who first hit on the idea of the 



WITH COMPLIMENTS TO PADDY 115 

Distributing Agency. As I see it now, he started 
that scheme not so much with the idea of making 
money for himself, for he didn't need it, but 
primarily to help me. It proved to be a good 
thing. He suggested that we divide on the twenty 
per cent and eighty per cent basis, he to take the 
twenty per cent. I couldn't see it that way, and 
told him if there was going to be a partnership it 
would have to be on even terms and on a fifty- 
fifty basis. 

I'll probably have to speak about him again, so 
I won't mention some of his other interests. If 
the Distributing Agency was a success, it's no 
wonder — he was behind it. And if you get the 
notion that I was having a hard time, remember 
that I had friends like that, and dismiss the no- 
tion. It isn't hard to five in a world with fellows 
of that sort. I liked the life. 

The Hardest Year, but the Best Yet 

Do I regret that year? No, it was by far the 
hardest that I was to have, but in many ways 
it was the most useful. You can't carry a sched- 
ule of that sort and waste time. I didn't fall off 



n6 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

in my studies. The best grades I ever received 
in college I received in these two terms. I got a 
very high third general for the year, and, as you 
will remember, obtained permission to enter the 
honors courses in my department the next fall. 

The great value of that year lay in the fact 
that it taught me how to use every moment of 
time. I could study for ten minutes and get ten 
minutes' worth of study out of it. I got into my 
books immediately, and learned to work rapidly 
when I had time to work. This one lesson has 
been one of the greatest things that my college 
course was to give me. But now the worst was 
over, and the next two years were to be rela- 
tively easy. 

The gloom with which I had started the year 
had completely worn off. I felt that I had made 
progress, that it was the best year that I had 
yet had. Indeed, that is the feeling I have had 
at the close of every one of my years at Princeton. 



CHAPTER VIII 
UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 

It is a law of physics that action and reaction 
are equal and opposite. You couldn't expect a 
fellow to go through what I have just told you 
without its leaving him some kind of a souvenir. 
The last time I had been sick was about twelve 
years before, and I had since often been told, 
as they looked me over, that "it's hard to kill 
a weed." But evidently something had gone 
wrong. 

I started off the summer vacation feeling 

pretty tired, but with a sense of relief. The 

biggest fights I have ever had have been with 

myself. Many of these I had in sophomore 

year, trying to fight of! sleep. I can remember 

now hearing that alarm-clock go off at five in 

the morning, when it seemed that I had just 

fallen asleep, and there in the darkness wrestling 

with myself and finally with a jump getting up 

117 



n8 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

to go at it again and visit my hungry furnaces. 
There is something perverse about a furnace, 
anyway — you have to take care of it in the 
worst time of the year and go out to meet it 
when it's dark and cold. It wouldn't be so bad 
if they could be run in the summer. When I 
took care of them I was always in a hurry, and, 
stoking up, I would get very hot and then have 
to rush out through the cold winter morning to 
another. I had contracted a number of colds, 
and had literally suffered during that year from 
lack of sleep. 

A Popular Professor 

This had forced me occasionally to impose on 
my indulgent professors. Now and then I had 
stolen a nap. I dozed while they thundered on. 
There was one man's class in which I slept quite 
regularly and without reproof. With me he was 
a popular professor. Unfortunately, his course 
came only three days a week, and these little 
kitten naps that you steal sitting up only make 
you hungry for more. I developed the bad habit 
of wanting to sleep, and one day it hit me in the 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 119 

wrong way, at the wrong time, and in the wrong 
place. That class was really too small to sleep 
in. But I fell asleep, and, worse luck, began to 
snore ! 

A fellow poked me with: "Hey, he's looking at 
you." I woke with a start and, to do something, 
looked at my watch. I had slept forty-five min- 
utes. The professor was staring at me, and the 
class had turned around to look. 

I said: "Good night! I've flunked this course." 

Evidently that professor was near-sighted. I 
got by with it, for, as I told you, I worked hard 
enough and had luck enough as a sophomore to 
be allowed to enter the new courses for honors 
students at the beginning of my junior year. 
Why I didn't stay in honors is another story, 
but I owe it in fairness to everybody to say that 
I left on request — on request, that is, of my de- 
partment. 

But, in any case, when I began the summer's 
vacation by working on the farm I was just a 
little bit fagged. My official position was now 
that of bookkeeper. 

I wasn't very well acquainted with the various 



120 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

diseases, and so, though I had contracted malarial 
fever, I didn't know it. But I hadn't been feel- 
ing very well, and after a few weeks decided I'd 
better get a leave of absence. I went home and 
went to the hospital to have a slight operation 
on my nose. On leaving the clinic I collapsed 
on the steps of a friend's house. I was ashamed 
of myself, but I was physically exhausted in the 
full and complete sense of that word, and it 
wasn't hard for something to get to me and lord 
it over me. Malaria had taken advantage of her 
opportunity. I got a three weeks' rest-cure, and 
woke up one day f eeling fine, went out for a walk, 
came back dead tired, and slept for twenty hours. 
A call came from the manager of the farm. He 
wanted me to take up the books again. I was 
still a little shivery, but came down the next week 
and worked off a good deal of my indisposition 
before the end of summer. 

I did farm work besides the bookkeeping, and 
it was lots of fun. That year the management 
gave prizes to the five men who could raise the 
greatest amount of produce off an acre of ground. 
It was a sort of Panama Canal scheme. Yes, I 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 121 

got one of the prizes; but you needn't say any- 
thing about that, for there were no blanks. 
Every one got in on a prize ! 

College opened with a bang. You'll remember 
that the last spring I had taken orders for slickers, 
and the first couple of weeks I was busy deliver- 
ing them to the crowd of new sophomores. Yes, 
I had good luck with that deal. The freshmen 
are the easiest fellows to deal with in college. 
They want you to think that they are wise, and 
they do things in flocks because each one wants 
to do what the other fellow does. So, as I have 
said, if we got one freshman in a crowd to sign 
up for a slicker, all the rest followed like sheep. 
That's why the freshmen are so easily imposed 
upon by the schemers around college. In addi- 
tion to that I was signing up men for the Press- 
ing Establishment. How had I gotten back in? 
It's a long story. All right, I'll tell you. 

The Undergraduate Magnate 

Well, my entrance into the Students' Pressing 
Establishment marks a new chapter in my finan- 
cial experiments, and it will be pretty hard to 



122 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

explain the whole situation. Up to this time, with 
the exception of the Distributing Agency, I had 
worked at what might be called odd jobs. I 
was the employee. I was now about to become 
an undergraduate business man, and because of 
the conditions of college life it is pretty hard for 
a man — pretty nearly impossible — to get into it 
before the junior year. Seniority counts for a 
good deal in college. And then there is a prej- 
udice against the sophomore and the freshman; 
they have no status in college when it comes to 
serious things; they only count in the catalogue. 
Undergraduate business, furthermore, is necessa- 
rily very complicated, and once in a while a selfish 
individual makes it more than complicated. You 
know, it must be completely reorganized every 
year. It grows up at haphazard, has its ups and 
downs, and it is difficult to tell where one part- 
ner's interest begins and ends. Furthermore, stu- 
dents, as a rule, are apprentices at business. 

I will illustrate from the history of only one 
student enterprise — though it would not be fair 
to take this as typical, except along certain lines. 
Usually there is no capital, there is only good- 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 123 

will. In this case there had been a little capital, 
but the good-will had by this time leaked out. 
In a certain year an upper classman had con- 
ceived the idea that it would be a good thing to 
start a pressing establishment on the campus for 
the students. He procured a room, bought the 
necessary tools and materials, and, by hiring 
experienced outside help to do the pressing and 
students to do the collecting and delivering, 
started up a business. It prospered, and when 
he had developed it to its maximum of efficiency 
he was graduated. That business, of course, had 
belonged to him. It was his idea, his capital, and 
his plant. He still had a number of accounts 
due him. As was natural, he carried off the books 
and collected the accounts. As he was a gener- 
ous chap, he turned over the business and all 
the paraphernalia to three men, one of whom was 
to be the manager for the succeeding year. He 
did not sell it to them. He was merely allowing 
them to run it during their time in college, they 
in turn to pass it on to their successors. Now, you 
can see that the status of the new manager, who 
did not own the business, who is merely manager 



i2 4 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

and not proprietor, as the founder was, will be 
somewhat undefined; and here, as in many cases, 
there was no constitution by which they could be 
guided. 

When, then, the second manager's college ca- 
reer ended he had no valid precedents to go by. 
What was to become of outstanding accounts 
now, and how were the profits to be divided? 
After an undergraduate business scheme has gone 
through several such processes of reorganization 
you can see that it stands a first-rate chance of 
being so hopelessly muddled that a Philadelphia 
lawyer couldn't straighten it out. This had come 
to be the case in the Students' Pressing Estab- 
lishment at the time of my entrance. Everything 
was at sixes and sevens. 

Does the Bureau of Self-Help have any con- 
nection with these business organizations? I 
should say it did! That is, it does now. Or- 
dinarily the bureau does not bother about enter- 
prises that are running along smoothly, but when 
a hitch comes the bureau straightens it out and 
turns it back to the students. One of the men, 
whose status as one of the managers was doubt- 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 125 

ful, wanted to get out and I wanted to get in. I 
did. 

Did the secretary of the bureau know any- 
thing about this ? Yes, he did. There were sub- 
sequent complications and I had to go to him and 
explain the whole situation. As you know, there 
is now a new secretary of the bureau. When I had 
got all through, after I thought I had told him 
everything, this new secretary started in where I 
left off and continued the story. It was a case of 
"continued in our next," and he knew more about 
that business than I did. But, after all, he left me 
in my place. Yes, I am the manager now. And 
after that conversation with the secretary I had 
a lot of respect for him. He is a peach of a lad, 
anyway. 

Why was I so anxious to get in? Because I 
knew that this could be made a good business 
if it were properly run. I knew something 
about it, for I had worked for the establishment 
in my freshman year. There was a chance to get 
in, and, as I intended to be part of it, I took the 
chance. 

The method which is now in vogue and which 



126 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

has proved most satisfactory is to take in by 
competition one member of the freshman class 
every year. In sophomore year he is given a 
position of minor importance, he rises as a junior, 
and as senior becomes manager. This provides 
for a regular progression. 

Staking His Reputation 

For reasons which I need not mention, at that 
time the Students' Pressing Establishment didn't 
stand too well on the campus. Signing up cus- 
tomers was therefore no easy job. Everybody 
had lost faith in the establishment. Student 
traditions persist, and we had to keep the name 
of the firm, and that name was then no longer 
a good one. At the mention of it the fellows 
would look the other way, for a great many of 
them were my friends and they hated to hurt 
my feelings. Yes, for one reason and another I 
had been very much in evidence on the campus 
during the past two years, and therefore, like the 
village blacksmith, almost every one knew me. 
When I met men who had been too slow to sign 
up with some other pressing firm, there were un- 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 127 

comfortable moments for both of us, and I finally 
signed up my men by staking my reputation that 
we would come through to their entire satisfac- 
tion. It was like pulling teeth, but I was bound 
to do my best to try to make it go. 

Was I still doing other work ? Oh, yes. I had 
my stint at the commons, I was bookkeeper for 
the farm until January 1, was doing my share 
for the Distributing Agency — which, incidentally, 
was humming now — and I worked in the library 
twelve, hours a week. Don't get the idea that I 
was the librarian. I sat in the cellar arranging 
dusty books, or up-stairs somewhere, and pasted 
labels into them. I threw up that job after a 
while, and, now that I had learned how to run 
them, I didn't take care of any more furnaces. 

Business Efficiency 

But with this new work in the Pressing Estab- 
lishment I realized that I was beginning another 
chapter. It was Pike's Peak or bust, so we 
started to develop the business. As to the ex- 
ecutive end of the work, we got up a constitu- 
tion and tried to put the thing on a businesslike 



128 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

basis. There was no longer to be any appeal to 
any one's sentiment. People were going to get 
value received for their money. We held weekly 
meetings and kept minutes and discussed the 
complaints and suggestions. We brought in a 
new system and made it compete successfully 
with other establishments of the same sort in 
town. Our pressers had been losing a lot of 
time walking to and fro heating their irons 
over the gas. We installed electric irons and 
gained about 15 per cent in efficiency. One of 
the complaints had been due to the fact that 
the men delivering the clothes and carrying them 
over their arm mussed them up somewhat, 
especially in damp weather. So we designed and 
had made for us a wagon that could be easily 
pushed about on the campus. It is the one we 
still use, and, so far as I know, is the only one 
of its kind in existence. It carries sixty suits, 
and they are hung as they are in a wardrobe, so 
that the suits are now delivered in perfect condi- 
tion. It eliminated many complaints and saved 
us the time of two men, and after some hard work 
we made out very well on the year's business; and, 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 129 

as my regular position there now brought me a 
snug little sum, I began to have more time to 
circulate on my own account. 

"Parlor-Snake Stuff" 

I suppose you could say that I was slowly 
getting an entree into what you might call high- 
brow society; but I never could pull that line of 
talk and feel easy. I tried that flowery stuff 
once and fell down. I guess it takes more than 
four years to put that into a fellow. But I didn't 
hanker for it; I did it for fun, the way a nice girl 
might try to smoke a cigarette. I confess it 
never appealed to me, from the very first fresh- 
man reception that I attended, and that was 
my first plunge. It struck me as hollow and 
affected. 

You want to know how I feel about it? Well, 
it's very strange to me. You take a lot of fel- 
lows in a college room, somebody's den, with their 
coats off and feet on the table — each chap talks 
because he wants to and says what he believes. 
You are man for man and every one is taken at 
his face value. You take that same crowd in 



i 3 o COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

dress suits and a lot of young ladies around — I 
don't know how to express it, but there is a 
psychological atmosphere that makes them any- 
thing but themselves. When they come out with 
that parlor-snake stuff they don't believe it, or 
expect any one else to. They are trying to get 
away with something. Instead of being willing 
to be taken at ioo per cent face value, they are 
trying to get away with 150 per cent. I haven't 
got those manners, but I suppose you've got to 
have them. No, I never wore a dress suit; I'm 
afraid it would bind me. 

One day I ran into a crowd of my swell friends. 
They asked me where I was from and I told 
them. You know, it is the slum section of my 
town, and you probably have some idea of what 
it is like from what I have told you. 

When I told the crowd where I came from 
one of the fellows gave me a queer glance, as 
much as to say: 

"You don't look like a rough-neck." 

It was all the same to them whether I came 
from Rotten Row or from Riverside Drive. 

I remember on another occasion, when I told 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 131 

a young lady interested in social work about the 
part of the country from which I came, she said: 

"Then you have heard about B ," refer- 
ring to my section, which goes by a rather ugly 
name. 

"Yes," I said, "I'd be delighted to take you 
through some time." 

"So you're interested in social economics ?" 

"Yes," I said, "very much, but I am more 
interested in my old home." 

Do I still live in the house where I lived as a 
boy? Oh, no, not many poor fellows have that 
good or bad luck. A poor family moves often. 
But we still live over in that section of the 
country, and I go back quite regularly. 

I don't feel that I have lost touch with my 
former acquaintances over there. I still call 
them by their nicknames when I see them. You 
remember that railroad detective who marched 
me to the station once under rather interesting 
circumstances? He's become a regular member 
of the police force, and he takes off his hat to me 
now when we pass. I believe he's one of the few 
in the old place who call me mister. 



i 3 2 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

Is College Democratic? 

What do I think of my high-bred friends as a 
lot? A mighty fine crowd. There are very few 
of them who, if they have money, let you know 
it. The fellows who are the snobs are either the 
nouveaux riches, or fellows whose parents have 
gone to rack and ruin because they are trying 
to keep up appearances and have nothing to do 
it on. I may be wrong, but that's been my ex- 
perience. 

Is college life more democratic than the life 
outside? Say, that's a humdinger of a question. 
I can't answer. You make me talk as if I were 
on the witness-stand. My opinion? All right. 
College life as I have found it has been very 
democratic. It wouldn't have been any place 
for me if it hadn't been, for I had never been out 
among people before I came here, and the class 
that I'd been brought up with are fiercely demo- 
cratic. There are distinctions in college, but they 
are not the same distinctions as in the outside 
world and they are not based on your parents' 
status. Men are divided along different lines. 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 133 

There is the athlete and the scholar, the good 
fellow and the stay-at-home. It's a case of birds 
of a feather. Then, too, there are distinctions be- 
tween the college classes. In my freshman year 
an upper classman thought he condescended and 
laid up treasure in heaven when he spoke to a 
freshman like myself. I myself as a sophomore 
felt for the first months that I was lowering my- 
self to speak to a freshman, but I tell you that 
that went away awfully fast, and not in my case 
alone. I think it's general. There are social 
snobs, but they are having a poor time of it, and 
they are so few that they are not even making a 
crowd for themselves. 

The college is not responsible for a few isolated 
cases like that. You meet them everywhere, and 
you can't expect to find everybody ideal. Col- 
lege is an isolated community, and the knocks 
you get here are not as hard as those in the out- 
side world, but you've got to expect some. Every 
fellow in college will meet with the same kind of 
treatment. His own face will be reflected in the 
other fellow's face : a smile will bring a smile, a 
jest a jest, and a gloom a gloom. I learned that 



134 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

early, so I decided to be my own gloom-consumer, 
and when I was blue I kept it to myself or told 
only a very few of my very best friends. But I 
don't think any place can be really more demo- 
cratic in this world than a place like Princeton 
after a football victory over Yale. When college 
interests really bind men together everything 
else is lost sight of, and in college life college 
interests generally predominate. 

Would I say that any one discriminated against 
me because I was working my way? I think I 
said no to that before, but I'd like to make it 
emphatic. I received all sorts of encouragement, 
as do any and all fellows who work their way. 
The trouble is that some fellows who are "work- 
ing their way" and are clamoring for a job are 
afraid to dirty their hands when a job is offered 
them. My advice to the man who has to work 
is to swallow his pride when a job comes along, 
and do it. If he is too genteel for any honest 
work that has to be done, let him stay away — 
for his own good. He will be in everybody's 
way, including his own. No one is discriminated 
against for doing any honest piece of work hon- 



UNDERGRADUATE BIG BUSINESS 135 

estly. By this time I had turned my hand to 
about everything, and I never noticed any dif- 
ference in the attitude of any one worth while 
around college. 



CHAPTER IX 

DON'T BE A TURTLE 

Before I begin to talk about my lazy years, 

I dare say that I hadn't been a turtle. No, the 

turtle isn't a secret society. I'll have to explain, 

because I first got a lot of fun thinking about that 

reptile, and later some solid satisfaction. There 

was an unused top floor in an annex of my high 

school and it was decided to institute a course 

in manual training. The department was turned 

over to an old German who looked like Socrates 

and whom we'll call Johann. His qualifications 

for this work were somewhat unique. He >ad 

owned a carpet-cleaning establishment and prior 

to that had been an undertaker. I sometimes 

thought that his career as undertaker had left 

its mark on him, and that he was trying to kill 

us; for, as dead men, it would have been easier 

for him to handle us. Living, we gave him a good 

deal of worry. 

136 



DON'T BE A TURTLE 137 

During the noon hour he used to console him- 
self in the saloon across the way. After he 
started in the school work he became like other 
teachers and rapidly acquired the idea that the 
whole educational system existed for the pur- 
pose of finally teaching manual training. He 
used to tell us that "dee chief events of manual 
training ees to learn to deevelop dee faculties of 
dee prain." It became for him the alpha and 
omega of all education, and, above all, it incul- 
cated the final virtue of industry. I used to try 
to create the illusion of being busy by working 
my plane with a full-arm swing and making great 
heaps of shavings, till he walked up one day, 
looked at the heap, looked at me, and mumbled 
in disgust as he scratched his head: "Dee more 
shavings, dee less prams." 

I had learned a good deal of this wisdom from 
old Johann. He used to remind us that America 
was the country of opportunity, and, as the prime 
example of success, used to cite himself and tell 
us how when he arrived here as a penniless emi- 
grant he had gone out into a little lumber camp. 
"Dey vas five Irishmens und I vas dee sixd, und 



138 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

vee vent oud in dee voods chopping vood." This 
little preludio always brought him a round of 
applause from young America. 

Well, Johann was not a patient man, and I 
tried his soul, so he used to labor with argument 
and threat to teach me industry, of which, under 
the circumstances, I naturally pretended to have 
even less than I had. I once drove him to de- 
spair and he left me to think over my sins. After 
about ten minutes of deep contemplation he 
walked slowly up to the blackboard and drew 
(he was an excellent draftsman) a large picture 
of a turtle. He had left me in anger and re- 
turned to stand by me in a mood of entreaty. 
"Now, X," he said, calling me by my first name, 
"I vant you to do someding for me. Venever 
you come in dis room, look up at dot picdure, und 
say to yourself: 'Doan be a tuddle. Doan be a 
schlow, crawling creadure.' Und den git to voork. 
Now, remember dot as long as you lif." Well, 
between you and me, I have and I will. 

Old Johann had a good deal of interest in us, 
but he didn't understand our kind, and we used 
to drive him into fits of frantic temper and rage, 



DON'T BE A TURTLE 139 

and I had the notion that he was an ugly old 
bear, until I learned from one of the boys who 
lived near him that his wife had for ten years 
been a helpless paralytic and that at home, where 
he spent all of his time after school hours, he 
was as tender and devoted as a child. About 
this time in my college career the old fellow died 
(God rest his soul) ; and if I tell you all this it is 
because his death brought it back to me with 
peculiar force, and it was some satisfaction to 
recall that, if I had wasted a good deal of his 
patience and time, I had at least not forgotten 
the big lesson he had tried to teach me. When 
I remembered all the times I had laughed at 
poor old Johann, I felt I had made some amends, 
at least, by not having been altogether a turtle. 
At least I suppose I can say I hadn't been so 
up to this time. 

Recreation 

Of course I was a junior now, and took things 
more easily. I went home more often and had 
more hours for recreation. Some of it I still 
took out in the way of athletics. Baseball and 



i 4 o COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

basket-ball were my craze. I had learned to play 
tennis while I was working on the farm in the 
summer, and in the evenings or on rainy days I 
turned to indoor sport occasionally and played 
my game of chess. I didn't play cards; except 
once in a while, when both of us were blue, 
my roommate and I played for a "jigger." Of 
course I had played before I got to college. You 
couldn't have lived where I had lived and not 
play cards. I suppose I knew almost every game 
that is played with pasteboards, but I thought it 
was best to cut it out. You will remember that I 
took a bottle of beer occasionally when I was 339. 
I gave that up, too, and I didn't smoke until I 
came to be a senior. But I had nearly smoked 
myself to death when I was nine. I dropped it 
at that time. You see, I'd had my chance to 
go to the dogs before I got here. Many fellows 
don't get theirs until they come to college. I 
didn't think it was worth while to fool with that 
kind of stuff any longer. 



DON'T BE A TURTLE 141 

"Bright College Years" 

Oh, yes, I'd learned a lot of poor stunts in the 
streets. But there was one good thing that I 
learned and it has helped to make life pleasant 
for me. I suppose it was there that I picked up 
a manner which makes it possible for me to ap- 
proach fellows without the formality of an in- 
troduction. I have always managed to get in 
with a congenial crowd, and before I got through 
with them always had a good time. No matter 
how busy I was, I was happy. You can't help 
being happy here if you take it right. You ought 
to be. If a man can't be happy in college there 
is something wrong with him, and he'll never be 
happy anywhere. 

Now that I could see daylight ahead, the time 
flew so quickly that days and weeks were gone 
before I knew it. I never worried when I had 
work. It was only when I didn't that I had 
worried, and now things were running nicely. 
When I was keyed up doing a thousand and one 
different things I came to have the keenest en- 
joyment in life. No, I was not doing "society"; 



142 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

that never was my line; but I was learning a 
good deal about a kind of life which had been 
absolutely new and strange to me. Of course 
I had never seen men live the way the wealthy 
fellows do around college. I wasn't only watch- 
ing "the other half/' I came into pretty close 
contact with them. 

But the worst of the fight was over now. My 
work at the library and at commons was enough 
to pay for all of my board and a good part of my 
room-rent, for I was getting a room in Hill Dor- 
mitory that had been left unoccupied for less than 
I had paid in my freshman year. I now knew 
my way around and could reduce my regular 
overhead charges. What I received from the 
Pressing Establishment and the Distributing 
Agency, the management of the sales of pro- 
grammes and incidental work, gave me a margin 
on which to pay off old debts and live a little 
more easily. I dressed like the other fellows, for 
you know none of us spends much money on 
clothes here — I suppose because there are no 
co-eds. And one of the nice things about it was 
the fact that money now came in bunches. I 



DON'T BE A TURTLE 143 

sat back in my room and waited for it. As a 
sophomore, it was three or five dollars at a clip. 
Now it usually came in checks of twenty-five or 
fifty, and, as the work was organized, my time 
was not chopped up as it had been. But don't 
get the notion that I was living on three meals a 
day and my books. There was something to do 
now and then, after all, but just enough to make 
life interesting. 

Did the boys treat me any differently when I 
was a manager than they did when I was stok- 
ing furnaces and blacking shoes? They certainly 
did not. And I can finish up this talk on de- 
mocracy with an instance that will show you the 
situation. When I had to leave town I got at 
times some very wealthy boys to substitute for 
me and do this "dirty work." Did they do it to 
oblige me? They surely did, and when I offered 
them their share of the month's pay they wouldn't 
take it, and, if I forced it on them later, took it 
and kept it as a souvenir. It's an ideal world we 
live in. It isn't everywhere you go that you can 
be taken for what you are worth. 

Oh, no, I wasn't wasting my time, and I 



144 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

wouldn't call myself a magnate. I did lots of 
work myself and had many long, hard days, but 
I liked what I was doing and did it for its own 
sake as well as its cash value. When you get 
right down to hard work and finally accomplish 
something, you have a feeling of keen inward 
satisfaction. You know it, a sort of self-satisfied 
feeling for the moment, and self-congratulatory. 
It's a feeling of reward for the work's sake. I 
didn't do as much physical work as I had done, 
and I didn't have to put in as many hours as 
I had done as freshman or sophomore. I had 
learned how to do a good many things, and I sup- 
pose you might say that I was beginning to be 
paid for "knowing how." I liked scheming and 
planning. Yes, I can give you an instance. 

Getting Paid for an Idea 

It was getting warm again. The winter was 
over and the world had a pleasant look. I was 
carrying around my circulars for the Distributing 
Agency, stepped into a room in Blair, and ran 
into a crowd of fellows discussing things. They 
were the business and editorial departments of the 



DON'T BE A TURTLE 145 

newly created Princeton Pictorial Review, They 
asked me if I would handle their "Pics" for the 
Cornell and Yale games. I told them that I 
would probably be taking care of a reunion class 
but that I would consider it. How many did 
they expect to sell? One hundred, they said. 

"I want your outside limit." 

"A hundred and twenty-five." 

"Well," I said, "I'll let you know in a couple 
of days." 

As I went on distributing the circulars I had 
what I thought was a bright idea. I knew that 
no programme was to be issued that year for the 
Cornell or Yale baseball games, so I went to the 
secretary of the Self-Help Bureau and asked him 
if I couldn't get out a programme for him, print 
it in the "Pic" and use the "Pic" as the pro- 
gramme. He said I'd have to make arrange- 
ments with the treasurer of the athletic associa- 
tion. That was easy. I went back to the room 
in Blair. The same fellows were still having the 
same conference. I said to them: "What's your 
proposition if I take the job?" 

"Two cents a copy on all copies sold." 



146 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I said: "The men selling for me, of course, are 
to get five." 

They agreed. 

You don't understand? Well, you must re- 
member that I had organized a system of sell- 
ing college magazines, programmes, etc. I had 
picked out the best sellers in college and I paid 
them the regular rate. In addition I got a com- 
mission on all sales for taking complete charge of 
the distribution, turning in the funds, and so forth. 

Now, in this arrangement with the "Pic," you 
understand, of course, that I was to manage all 
the sales. I said to them: 

"You expect me to sell one hundred and 
twenty-five as an outside limit?" 

"Yes." 

"I've listened to your proposition, now you 
listen to mine. Will you be willing to give me 
five cents a copy as my commission on every 
'Pic' I sell over one hundred and twenty-five?" 

"Yes." 

"All right, it's a go. Order three hundred for 
the Cornell game and two thousand for the Yale 
game." 



DON'T BE A TURTLE 147 

They thought I'd gone crazy. 

"What's the idea?" 

And I told them: "The 'Pic' is a new institu- 
tion. You advertise in The Princetonian and in 
The Alumni Weekly that we are going to bring 
The Pictorial Review before the alumni at the Yale 
game by selling it instead of the regular pro- 
gramme. This 'Pic' will be a regular issue, with 
the exception that there will be a baseball line- 
up in the centre of it." 

The fellows thought this was good stuff. Nev- 
ertheless, they were a little bit afraid of them- 
selves, and gave me only two hundred "Pics" 
for the Cornell game. The baseball programme 
for the Cornell game was printed in the issue, 
and we also inserted a loose-leaved track pro- 
gramme, as there was also a track meet that day. 

I had sold out the issue a half-hour before 
the game began. This gave them confidence; 
but they thought I was earning too much money, 
so they cut down my commission for the Yale 
game. My original proposition had taken them 
off their feet, and I therefore agreed to the re- 
duction. Some days later they suggested a fur- 



148 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

ther reduction and wanted to give me only half 
of the original commission. I said: 

"Business is business. Either you pay me 
three cents and a half or all bets are ofl and 
there will be no programme." 

But, to show that I had more confidence in 
the proposition than they did, I guaranteed to 
sell at least one thousand before I took any com- 
mission whatever. This relieved them of their 
anxiety and they agreed. I engaged picked men 
as salesmen, and on the day of the Yale game 
sold one thousand nine hundred and twenty 
copies, instead of the one hundred and twenty- 
five they had counted on. The business manager 
was elated. So was I. It wasn't a bad day's 
work, and, besides, in the words of William 
Shakespeare, it had been 'as easy as lying' and 
much safer. 

How were my studies progressing? Fair to 
middling. They interested me, of course — that's 
why I came to college; but I had also come with 
the definite idea of becoming a teacher. I had 
been brought up by teachers and wanted to be 
one myself, but unconsciously I defeated my own 



DON'T BE A TURTLE 149 

purpose. I was becoming involved in so many 
varied business deals, especially in my last two 
years, and was expending so much interest and 
energy upon them, that I had come to feel that I 
should very likely enter " business' ' as my " pro- 
fession. " 

Yes, I was getting along first-rate financially, 
and had come to the point where I could turn 
odd jobs away if I wanted to. I earned a great 
deal more than I had previously, and was begin- 
ning to get into the managing of things. I was 
not living extravagantly, though more comfort- 
ably. 

No, I was not putting money in the bank. 
There were other places for it. 

Yes, I practically always owed the treasurer 
money, but it was now from force of habit and 
not from force of circumstances. I don't mean 
by that that when I had money I didn't pay him; 
but I had many uses for the money which I can't 
explain to you, and I enjoyed a certain sense of 
security in knowing that I could always pay my 
treasurer's bill when I had to. 



CHAPTER X 
A SENIOR AT LAST 

Well, I was a senior now. How did it seem 
to be in my last year? It was in the natural 
course of events. I had expected to become a 
senior and it was all 0. K. No, there wasn't the 
feeling of jubilation that I had in passing from 
freshman to sophomore year. My old troubles 
were practically over and it was easy sledding. 
I knew where I was going to live; I had my room 
in Reunion; I had my friends. Furthermore, I 
had my work cut out for me, and I now knew 
how to do it. 

Was I looking for more work? Yes, I was 
always doing that, but it now came without my 
going after it; and what I wanted most was new 
work in the way of organizing and starting things 
that gave me a chance to use my past experience. 

You remember when I came as a freshman 
that morning before eight o'clock and sat with 

ISO 



A SENIOR AT LAST 151 

my little satchel out on the front campus like a 
lost soul, and wondered at the fellows in flannel 
trousers who were greeting each other as they 
came along the walk toward Nassau Hall? Well, 
I was one of those fellows in flannel trousers 
now, and I suppose poor freshmen with lumps 
in their throats wondered at prosperous me. Any 
freshman who came as I had come must cer- 
tainly have thought about me as I did about the 
other fellows when I was a freshie. He must 
have believed that I was a prime hypocrite. I 
was going around like the rest of them, shaking 
hands, feeling fine to see them again, and saying: 

"How are you?" 

"Have you had a pleasant summer?" 

Did I see any freshman who looked as if he 
were in just about the same fix I was in when I 
first hit the campus? 

Yes, it was odd — I did see one such chap, and 
college had opened again on the same kind of 
sunny autumn day. He was sitting there under 
the trees on a bench near Nassau Hall waiting 
for the world to clear up and for something to 
happen to him. But now the roles were inverted 



152 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

and I was going around doing the signing up for 
the Pressing Establishment. I even walked up to 
the frightened little chap, but I didn't ask him to 
sign up, and between three or four of us we cer- 
tainly tried to make him feel at home; and, just 
as I had been given a bunk on my first night, a 
couple of us now gave him one. Just now he's 
making the same fight that I did, and I wish 
him luck. 

They do call the seniors "grave," but I don't 
think they really are so. They are older. They 
are men now, and some of the pop and efferves- 
cence is gone. They don't pull off any boys' 
tricks because they've outgrown them. When a 
freshman arrives he wonders what he is up against 
and he tries hard to be a part of something that 
he does not really understand. A senior knows 
what he's here for, and he knows, too, that in the 
near future he is going out to have his share 
of the world's responsibilities. The under class- 
man has no sense of time, and the sophomore 
lives and acts as though college life were going 
to last forever. That's what makes the soph 
look so foolish to the man outside, and I suppose 



A SENIOR AT LAST 153 

that's why they call immature stuff sophomoric. 
All that I can say is that when I got to senior 
year I was grave in comparison with what I 
had been as a sophomore, because I began to 
get whiffs from the world outside, and once in a 
while the thought of the permanent job, of the 
life-work, came to me as I sat reading in my 
room in the evening. 

His First Vacation 

College had opened and we were at it again. 
The summer was over and I was feeling fine. I 
had been at work at a country club in June and 
July, but illness at home forced me to come back, 
and, as I could now afford it, I did so. Fortu- 
nately the illness was not as serious as we had 
feared and after a little while my younger brother 
and I were free to take time out. We took a 
bumming trip on an ice-boat and had bunks in 
one of a string of about fifty barges that were 
being towed up the Hudson by a tug. After 
about three days of tins rapid transit (the first 
day we had only made Grant's Tomb) we struck 
a little one-horse town and got out on shore, and 



154 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

on looking up at one of the corners I saw the usual 
lager sign, with another sign underneath adver- 
tising a reading-room. I went in. 

Which sign was it that persuaded me? The 
other one. I hadn't seen a newspaper in three 
days. There were two elderly fellows inside; one 
had a white apron around his rather corpulent 
body. He didn't look like the librarian. He be- 
longed to the other sign. The other gentleman 
was a cripple of about sixty-five, with long white 
whiskers, and wore a starry badge. My younger 
brother, who likes his fun as well as I do, whipped 
out his handkerchief and began to shine the spot 
on his own coat where a badge would have been 
had he worn one. The old fellow looked disap- 
provingly at this act of lese-majesle y began to 
limp around impatiently, and we were promptly 
informed that he was the sheriff. The sheriff 
looked us over with an evil eye. I said: 

"Is this a public reading-room?" 

"Well, ain't nobody been turned out of here 
yet," said the man in the white apron. 

"Provided he behaves himself," added the 
sheriff. 



A SENIOR AT LAST 155 

Well, we behaved ourselves, and read the 
papers, and then moved on to other sleepy Rip 
Van Winkle villages and towns, and after some 
lazy days of this sort I came back feeling ready 
for anything. So I started the new year in first- 
rate physical condition. 

One of the main features of the opening hey- 
day was conspicuously absent. Horsing was 
gone. Requiescat in pace. If it was missed we 
didn't notice it, and I don't believe the freshmen 
missed it either. 

Do I think it a mark of effeminacy that hors- 
ing should have been given up? No, I think it 
is a mark of manliness. We are growing up and 
changing with the times. It may have been neces- 
sary once, but I don't think it is any longer. 

Closing the Books 

How about my treasurer's bill? Oh, that was 
all right. I received my usual notice from the 
treasurer that he would like to have me pay up 
my balance, as he " wished to close his books." 
I went in and told him to go ahead and close his 
books, not to mind me; then I assured him that 



156 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

he would be paid in toto before I was graduated, 
but what I needed was a little time. Even now 
at the end of the year there is a slight bill against 
me, but it will be cleared away before I bid 
him good-by. We are the best of friends. As a 
matter of fact, so far as I know, I haven't an 
enemy in the place, and I certainly bear no 
grudge against any one. 

Things went along swimmingly. I think I told 
you it was one long joy-ride. That's no mere 
talk. It's a fact. If any one has ever had a better 
time than I have had this year, I'd like to shake 
hands with that man. 

You want to know something about my new 
schemes? They were of all kinds. I started to 
raise the sales of the New York Times. That was 
a failure. But I have just now come back from a 
trip as advertising agent for the Granville Barker 
Greek plays at Princeton, and I have earned 
nearly as much in a week as I did in a term as a 
freshman. I'm strong for Lilian McCarthy and 
Iphigenia. Of many others I will give you only 
the instance which I think gave me most satis- 
faction. Our new stadium was to be ready for 
the Yale game, and, as this was a very special 



A SENIOR AT LAST 157 

occasion, a number of us decided that we ought 
to have some particular thing which could be 
kept as a souvenir of this date in the college his- 
tory. Two men got up a special programme. 
One of them is the fellow I told you about who 
can do everything and who does it well — my 
partner, in other words. I certainly congratu- 
late myself on having a friend like that. It's 
worth the college course. This time I took com- 
plete charge of the selling. You remember what 
that programme was — one of the best things in 
that line we've ever gotten out here. The de- 
mand far exceeded the supply, though we ordered 
three times as many as had ever been used be- 
fore on similar occasions. 

Keen Competition 

Did I ever have any competition in selling 
programmes? I surely did. I once ran into an 
outsider, and I have to smile now when I think 
of the mean trick I played him. It was pretty 
tough, but I had to do it — and he was in the 
wrong. It was the first time I had ever been 
put in charge of selling the programmes, and the 
secretary had made it perfectly plain to me that 



158 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I was on trial; and it was in the days when I had 
to have jobs to live. 

This is what happened. When I got down to 
the field and had distributed the programmes to 
the men selling for me and had assigned them 
their places, I found that a New York firm had 
gotten out a programme that had ours beat. This 
often happened in those days. Besides, they had 
street urchins to sell them, and, between you and 
me, they are usually better salesmen than stu- 
dents. They're more impudent and persistent 
and can snake through a crowd. Against that 
combination I didn't stand a chance, and for a 
while I had to watch their manager sell his pro- 
grammes while my men were getting the cold 
shoulder; and I was thinking about what the 
secretary would say to me when I carried back 
the bundles of unsold programmes. I had an 
idea, and called over Hank the cop. I said: 

"Hank, go over and see whether that man 
has a permit to sell. If he hasn't, arrest him for 
selling without a license, take him to the town 
hall, and make him buy one. Don't hurry, 
Hank; there's lots of time." 



A SENIOR AT LAST 159 

In my desperation I had hit the weak spot 
in my competitor's armor, and by the time he 
had walked a half-mile to the town hall, gone 
through the formalities, and returned I had sold 
my programmes. For the rest of the day I left 
the field to him. 

But last fall at that stadium opening we had 
a programme that could compete to advantage 
with anything on the market, and we didn't 
have to bother about the other fellows. 

You remember my first experience in selling 
programmes was as a freshman on the day of the 
Harvard-Princeton game, and I felt then that the 
five dollars I earned was the easiest money ever. 
At this game I had to look after about forty men 
who were selling programmes as I had sold them 
then. Each of those men was getting twice as 
much on every sale as I had earned as a fresh- 
man, and the heaps of programmes in their arms 
were simply melting away. My own share in the 
day's work, or rather in all the work that led up 
to that day, amounted to just about thirty-five 
times what I had cashed in for that first ex- 
perience. 



160 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

Taking a Loaf 

Well, wealth never did sit well on my shoul- 
ders. Oh, yes, I kept at my regular work. I 
was manager of the Pressing Establishment, did 
my work in the Distributing Agency, at the 
commons, and in the new schemes that turned 
up from time to time. But I suppose I felt too 
good over the success of that programme. At 
Thanksgiving I went home for only a day and 
then rushed of! to spend the rest of the time 
up in New York State at my roommate's. But 
after Thanksgiving I ran into a slump and loafed 
until Christmas. I loafed so obtrusively that it 
got on my roommate's nerves, and I did it so 
hard that after loafing for three weeks I had 
to go home for a vacation. Most of the time 
I spent at parties. Yes, theatre and dancing 
parties. 

But I came back and got into the mill again 
and began to grind once more. 

Did I still have that old feeling of constraint? 
No, I didn't have it as I had it in freshman year, 
but a little of it was left. You will remember my 



A SENIOR AT LAST 161 

telling you that I had to learn the way of life 
of the undergrads, and that when I arrived in 
Princeton I didn't know what a dessert was. I 
had about caught up now and had come to a 
decision. For two years I had tried to do as they 
did. Now I was feeling far easier and freer in 
manner and speech. You can't help but improve 
unconsciously, and I had at times made a con- 
scious effort. But now I had the sense of having 
served my apprenticeship and could act pretty 
much as they did. But in many things I decided 
that I preferred to be myself. 

In what way? Oh, in many ways. My use 
of language, for instance. Do I use slang to my 
professors? Of course not. But when I wish to 
talk to a man that I know, I do it in my own lan- 
guage, and if slang expresses it better I use slang. 
If you have something to say to the other fellow, 
the important thing is to have him get it. 

Two Years to Make a College Man 

Had my attitude toward college changed ? Cer- 
tainly. All this helped to bring about a change. 
During the first two years, besides feeling strange 



162 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

I had the feeling of being handicapped. My pre- 
vious training had not been of the best, and the 
ways of college life, as well as the ways of men 
generally, were new. Two years of running up 
against the same thing and going through the 
same mill had brought out fairly similar products. 

If you want my opinion, it is this. It takes two 
years to make a college student; it takes two more 
to let him make of himself a college graduate. 
In junior and senior years I no longer had any 
sense of being handicapped; I felt that we were 
all running from scratch and it was a fair field 
and no favor. If some of us did fall behind, it 
was our own fault. 

Had I acquired the feeling of independence? 
Yes, I felt that all doors were open and I could 
come and go as I chose. That is the feeling I 
now had about the world at large, and it is one of 
the finest things my coming to. college has given 
me. I now feel that I can circulate freely not 
only in the class in which I grew up but with 
all sorts and conditions of men. But you can 
have independence and not have confidence. I 
was now beginning to be in that stage. Yes, I 



A SENIOR AT LAST 163 

had had enterprise before, but not confidence. 
What gave it to me ? I will tell you what helped. 

In my junior year I needed money, and wrote 
to my partner, who was out of town. I told him: 
"I have a deal on hand; send me fifty dollars.' ' 
That isn't the way they did things where I came 
from. He showed his absolute faith in me by 
sending it on the next mail with no questions 
asked. By advancing that sum in that way he 
did far more than show fifty dollars' worth of 
confidence in me. He gave me confidence itself, 
because when some one else has faith in you and 
shows it you can't help getting a little yourself. 
When the check fell out of his letter I beamed 
all over inside. That was the start. 

Of course, I was seeing a great deal more of the 
fellows than I had ever done before. I was in 
my room more of the time and in the rooms of 
my friends. We went to the movies together, 
shot a jigger now and then, and in the evening 
smoked a pipe and had a talk. I tell you I en- 
joyed some of those talks. I said once that when 
I came I didn't have the feeling that I belonged 
here. That was still true in a sense. I don't 



i6 4 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

mean that I still felt lost. That was gone long 
ago, but I didn't feel perfectly natural. There 
was so much of the unexpected in this college 
world for me that every now and then some- 
thing still bobs up to prove that I haven't learned 
everything about it yet. It's a little bit like the 
feeling a man has just before an examination 
when he isn't well prepared. I didn't have the 
ways of society down cold, that's what I mean. 
I can illustrate. 

The other day I saw a classmate who has 
worked his way like myself walking along the 
campus with a young lady. I met him later and 
began to jolly him about it. I said he looked 
unnatural, uncomfortable, and lost. He immedi- 
ately took me up and offered to prove to me 
that he was perfectly natural. He did. This is 
the way he put it: 

"For me it is natural to feel unnatural, uncom- 
fortable, and lost when I am walking along the 
campus with a young lady." 

"You win," I said. 

I guess he had it on me. I didn't feel perfectly 
at home, but I was getting used to it, and of 



A SENIOR AT LAST 165 

course I am now far more comfortable in any 
kind of life than I ever was before. 

"The Ballad of Hard-Luck Henry" 

Do you know "The Ballad of Hard-Luck 
Henry"? Well, 

"Hard-Luck Henry he was hoodoo-proof, 
He knew the way to lose." 

That's pretty much the case. I don't want to 
pull any rah-rah or virtuoso stuff, but I want to 
make you understand if I can. It's like this. 
A fellow in my situation is bound to make mis- 
takes. He is living in a different class of society 
and more or less frequently he puts his foot into 
it. Well, I had grown accustomed to making my 
occasional slip. I was becoming hoodoo-proof, 
and conscious that I was not at home, but I was 
not yet conscious of the mistakes I made when I 
made them. I always became conscious of them 
later. 

In those conversations with the other boys — 
and we had many heart-to-heart talks that went 
to rock-bottom — I have learned that there is a 



166 . COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

difference between fellows who come to college 
as I did and enter what might be called a strange 
world, and the fellows to the manner born. It's 
a question of psychology, a sort of dual-person- 
ality effect. Any time when I got back into my 
room after having been out in a crowd, especially 
if it had been a mixed company, I would sit 
down and begin to view myself objectively. I 
would see myself — yes, literally see myself — as 
if I were there on the stage going through all the 
scenes of that gathering, and criticise myself as 
I would an actor. My self in these situations 
was an entire stranger to me. I mean that lit- 
erally. I was at the same time audience and 
actor, and usually I would end up by saying: 

"Oh, what a dub you are! Why didn't you 
say so-and-so? Why didn't you do this instead 
of that?" 

And each time I had learned something. But, 
after all is said and done, I'd rather get "ham 

and " down on Park Row than dine a la mode 

at the Astor. 



A SENIOR AT LAST 167 

By Way of Diversion 

What sort of amusement did I have? Every- 
thing was an amusement as I look back at it 
now. The joke was either on me or on somebody 
else, and I enjoyed it coming or going. You 
know the line: 

"If you're up against it badly, then it's only one on you." 

At that I wasn't up against it very often or 
very hard. 

Yes, out of the faculty and out of my lessons 
I was getting pure enjoyment. No, I prefer not 
to talk about what I got from books, because I 
suppose it's much the same sort of thing the other 
fellows get out of them. There was, to be sure, 
now and then a lecture or lesson that was dry as 
dust, but out of most of them I got immense en- 
joyment, and especially, ever since my freshman 
year, out of my preceptorials. Honestly, I don't 
know anything I enjoyed more than preceptorial 
conferences with a good preceptor — everybody 
informal, everybody at home, everybody speaking 
his mind. The sense of work was gone, but you 



168 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

had the sense of wrestling with ideas and getting 
both pleasure and profit out of them. But, in 
addition to the pleasure I got out of what study- 
ing I did, it was a great satisfaction to me to feel 
that I was getting also business training, inde- 
pendence, and confidence in myself. 

One Grand Recreation 

I want to repeat that I have had a wonderful 
time. That's the impression I want you to get. 
This place has been one grand recreation, and 
this campus comes as near being a Utopia as any- 
thing I have ever seen. You must remember 
what I told you before, that the kindliness of 
the fooling was something new to me, and there 
was something particularly pleasing in the at- 
titude of good-fellowship and friendliness that 
prevails. 

As I look back at it now I feel I got a great 
deal out of it. Most of it didn't come in the way 
I had expected. It didn't come from books. To 
me the greatest thing was learning how to talk 
and deal with my fellow men, and the oppor- 
tunity which I have had of meeting fellows from 



A SENIOR AT LAST 169 

all walks of life and all parts of the country in 
the friendly and intimate way which I could 
never have enjoyed otherwise. Ninety per cent 
you are glad to know; nine per cent you are very 
glad to know; and one per cent you wouldn't 
have missed knowing for your life. I suppose 
the thing I treasure most about it is my friends. 

In business, if I had gone into it, instead of 
coming to college, I am sure that I would have 
gotten a different standpoint and one which would 
have given me far less satisfaction in life. When 
I came here I held the opinion that everybody 
was trying to do you; that was the way of the 
world as I had seen it until then. I think I told 
you that the confidence and respect I had learned 
to have for my fellow man meant a great deal to 
me. Then you can't help being a little more 
tolerant after seeing different classes of fellows 
and learning their various characteristics. I re- 
spect any one's belief now, even if it's in the 
white elephant. 

Well, this sense of close friendship and unity 
of interest with many men is more to me than 
anything else, because I never dreamed that it 



1 7 o COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

could exist. Yes, college men are different as a 
class from the men I would have met outside. 
If before I came here I had met some one who 
was doing something shady I would have said: 
"Well, that's life." But if now after I get out 
I should run across any classmate of mine doing 
something crooked, it would break me up pretty 
badly. And, between you and me, I don't think 
that will happen. 

Well, since this last spring came my life with 
my classmates here has been a delight which I 
could not describe. Of course, college students 
have faults that are peculiarly their own. One 
of them is the notion that they are superior to 
the men outside. It's not to be wondered at. 
We have been down here for four years, and 
every man of national or international reputation 
who has come to lecture has spoken about like 
this: 

"You are the men who are going to be the 
leaders of the nation." 

We get it from all sides, and pretty soon some 
of us fool ourselves into the belief that it's true, 
and when such a chap goes out he looks at the 



A SENIOR AT LAST 171 

poor shopkeeper or laborer from pretty far up 
and says: 

"You poor boob, who are you? I am a leader 
of the nation." 

What Might Have Been 

What would I have done if I had never come 
to college and had stayed at home ? The chances 
are that I would have done what almost every- 
body else around there was doing. I would have 
gone down to the rubber-mill. In that case it 
would now be about time for me to be showing 
traces of tuberculosis. It's literally true that on 
an average down there they get a touch of tuber- 
culosis after four years and in ten years are 
physical wrecks. I know a great many fellows 
who were brought up with me who have gone to 
pieces in that rubber-mill. 

Why should I regret that I had to work my 
way? After my first year I could have stopped 
work. I didn't want to. There are always a 
lot of people who want to help you and make it 
easy for you. At the end of my sophomore year 
the father of one of my classmates very gener- 



172 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

ously offered to loan me the money to pay my 
expenses. I certainly appreciated the spirit in 
which that offer was made. But long before that 
time I had made up my mind that I was going 
to see this thing through myself, and I was 
having so good a time that I hated to let any one 
else in on it. If I have stolen some of the time 
from my studies and devoted it to business, I 
don't think that time has been wasted in any 
sense, and, though I should have liked to have 
earned my Phi Beta Kappa key, I'm satisfied as it 
is. So are the folks at home, who, with the peo- 
ple in the old neighborhood, were doubtful when 
I first made my long fifty-mile journey. Since 
things have gone so well with me, as they will 
with any one, three other fellows have come 
from my old school, so that there are four of us 
now. One of them is my brother, and I have 
two more who are now anxious to come to college. 

Looking Forward 

What am I going to do next? Oh, I'm not 
worrying. At the time when I came down here 
as a freshman I was uncertain about everything. 



A SENIOR AT LAST 173 

I had my fists clinched. It was the feeling that 
everybody was going to try to knock me off my 
feet. It's different now. I have the feeling that 
everything is going to turn out all right. I re- 
member one of my preceptors told us that when 
Alexandre Dumas first came to Paris he had 
twenty francs, and that after having made mil- 
lions and lost them, on his death-bed he called 
his son to him and said: "They reproach me 
with having been prodigal. It's no such thing. 
I came to Paris with twenty francs. I have kept 
them. There they are." And he pointed to the 
purse on the mantel. It contained just twenty 
francs. That's all he had left, but he was satis- 
fied to have broken even in this game of life. 

Well, when I came to Princeton first I had 
three dollars. I have saved money. I'll have at 
least that much when I leave. So I shall cer- 
tainly be as rich as I was then, and I'm carrying 
away with me a lot that you can't measure in 
money. 



174 COLLEGE ON NOTHING A YEAR 

The Wide, Wide World 

I am booked up to June 15, and I hate to 
look ahead to the time when they begin to put 
the fellows through the car-windows, and when 
our little crowd dwindles away. It makes me 
feel pretty blue to think that very soon this class, 
with which I have spent the best four years of 
my life, will scatter and never meet again with 
all present. For even at reunions some will be 
absent. It sort of breaks you up — you can't 
help it. I hate to think of leaving them, but I 
am anxious to get started. And, of course, at 
first I shall go home. 

No, I'm not going to stick in my old town. 
After a few days I'll make my start at something, 
and it will be: "Good-by, mother; so-long, folks; 
I'm going." 

Me for the "wide, wide world." 







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